290 BULLETIN 14 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



are leavins the vicinity, but not so fre(iuently heard at other times as are the 

 flight notes of various species. This note is sometimes three syUabled, ketakek, 

 or may be of a single sylhible, kck, on taking wing. A much rarer, loud, plover- 

 like klk-kyu has been heard from a turnstone when coming to decoys or flying 

 along the edge of favorable marshes. The cackle of the turnstone is almost 

 impossible to imitate, but they will decoy readily to a whistled imitation of the 

 cry of their associate the black-bellied plover. 



The song of the turnstone as heard on its breeding grounds few 

 have been privileged to hear. Mr. Brandt calls it " a loud but not 

 unpleasont note, rapidly repeated — kye-ute-cat-tat-tah.'''' Mr. Jour- 

 dain has given us, under courtship, his impressions of it and those of 

 Messrs. Trevor-Battye and Paget-Wilkes. 



Field triarks. — The turnstone is a conspicuous and well-marked 

 bird, not likely to be mistaken for anything else. It is a stout, short- 

 legged bird with a short neck and a short, straight bill. In its 

 brilliant spring plumage the white head, black throat, red legs, and 

 rufous back aj-e unique field marks. But the best field marks, most 

 conspicuous in the nuptial plumage, but present in all plumages, 

 are the five white stripes on the upper surface, which show very 

 plainly as the bird flies away ; these are a broad central stripe on the 

 back, separated by a black patch on the rump from the white area 

 in the tail, a narrow stripe on the outer edge of the scapulars and a 

 band across the wing on the secondaries and primaries. Unfor- 

 tunately for observers on the Pacific coast, the black turnstone has 

 somewhat similar white stripes, but the pattern is a little different. 



Fall. — Adult turnstones begin to leave their summer homes in 

 Greenland about the middle of July, with the knots and sanderlings, 

 and before the end of August the last of the 3^oung birds have left. 

 Lucien M. Turner obtained an adult from Davis Inlet on July 25; 

 but the species apparently avoids Ungava, for the only bird he saw 

 there was a young male taken on August 20. Probably the birds 

 which breed in western Greenland migrate coastwise along the Labra- 

 dor coast and Nova Scotia to New England. We saw the first turn- 

 stones at Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, on July 30 and 31 ; but my earliest 

 record for adults in Massachusetts is on August 1; adults are com- 

 mon here all through August; the young birds come along late in 

 August, and I have seen them here as late as October 12. 



There is a heavy migration down the west coast of Hudson Bay. 

 Edward A. Preble (1902) saw the first turnstones at Fort Churchill 

 on July 30 ; and on August 10 to 13 he " observed many small flocks 

 about 25 miles south of Cape Eskimo " ; August 21 to 26 he saw 

 " many flocks daily." From the Hudson Bay region the main flight 

 seems to be southeastward through the Great Lakes region to the 

 Atlantic coast. It seems to be very rare in the fall west of eastern 



