BAR-TAILED GODWIT. 253 
are esteemed a great delicacy, and sell for half-a-crown 
or five shillings a piece.” In the Lord North Accounts, 
is a single entry of two “ yerwhelps” supplied at two 
shillings. 
LIMOSA RUFA, Temminck. 
BAR-TAILED GODWIT. 
Whilst the previous species has become scarce, even 
as a migrant, the Bar-tailed Godwit may be reckoned 
as the type of our migratory waders. Regular, and in 
favourable seasons abundant, on its spring and autumn 
passage, there still seems no reason to suppose that this 
species was at any time a resident in our marshes; 
though doubtless a still more numerous visitant in 
former days, when the country presented far greater 
attractions, and the persecutions of local gunners had 
not as yet thinned their ranks, or warned them to “pass 
on” quickly to their distant homes. 
In spring a few specimens are occasionally obtained as 
early as the first or second week in April, either pioneers 
of the main body of migrants, or birds which have 
scarcely left our shores throughout the winter; yet even 
amongst these, I have occasionally noticed one or two 
males which had assumed the rich red of their breeding 
plumage. It is not, however, till the month of May 
that the northward movement takes place in earnest, 
and so constant is the date of their vernal passage, that 
the 12th of May is known as “Godwit day” to the 
Breydon gunners. Such, at least, from the observations 
of many seasons, is the average time of their appearance, 
though from the commencement of that month up to 
the 20th or 21st examples are met with in every variety 
of plumage, as flight follows flight, impelled by instinc- 
