BIRDS OF ARGENTINA, PARAGUAY, URUGUAY, AND CHILE 147 



the hotels in a surreptitious manner. As game birds were served 

 with head and tarsus intact it was a simple matter to determine that 

 the birds offered were actually upland plover and not other shore 

 birds, as I proved by ordering them on various occasions. Once 

 my waiter brought two to show me that had been plucked and 

 cleaned, but were still uncooked. The price charged for a portion 

 was a peso and thirty or forty centavos, about 65 cents in our 

 currency. I was told that the birds were so scarce that they were 

 secured only by those gunners familiar with places where the 

 upland plover alighted when in migration. 



Two were seen near Ezeiza, Buenos Aires, on March 2; at Gua- 

 mini, Buenos Aires, two were recorded in northward flight, high 

 in the air on March 3, and two more on March 4. At Tucuman, 

 Tucuman, five were heard early in the evening of April 1 as they 

 passed over the city traveling due north during a slow rain accom- 

 panied by heavy mist. On the night of April 5 under similar con- 

 ditions an extensive flight of shore birds began at a quarter of 10 

 and continued until half past 11. During this period* J. L. Peters, 

 with whom I was traveling at the time, and I identified the call 

 of the upland plover from 38 individuals. The birds were in com- 

 pany with yellowlegs, solitary sandpipers, and a few golden plover. 

 How many passed unheard in the darkness there was no way to 

 know. The calling of these birds when in northward migration 

 was a phenomenon of common knowledge in Tucuman during that 

 season in the year, but all commented upon the fact that the birds 

 seemed to have decreased greatly in abundance in recent years. 



In conclusion I may say that while the upland plover was re- 

 corded on various occasions this took place when the birds Avere in 

 flight and that though special search was made I was not fortunate 

 enough to discover an area where the birds were in residence. As, 

 like the Eskimo curlew, a species that I did not meet, the Bartramian 

 sandpiper inhabits the drier uplands it is i^robable that difference 

 in ecological conditions due to intensive cultivation and grazing 

 have wrought such great changes in the more primitive conditions 

 found on the pampa in its original state that the birds are unable 

 to adjust themselves to them and have been slowly crowded out, 

 where other destruction has not overtaken them. 



ACTITIS MACULARIA (Linnaeus) 



Tringa macularm Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed. 12, vol. 1, 17G6, p. 249. 

 (Pennsylvania.) 



On October 25, 1920, near the mouth of the Rio Ajo below Lavalle, 

 Buenos Aires, I saw the familiar form of a spotted sandpiper teeter- 

 ing on a projection at the base of a cut bank of clay. The bird 

 proved to be an immature female. The species had been taken once 



