356 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
extremely abundant. ‘They appear on the coast in the beginning of 
autumn in vast flocks.” 
Dr. J. H. Storer records in his manuscript journal that he saw the 
first curlews on August 3, 1849, at Red Bay. On August 7th he 
makes the following entry: ‘‘The Curlews began to come and in 
immense flocks though very shy.” 
Packard writes of the Curlew as follows: ‘On the 10th of August 
[1860] the curlews appeared in great numbers. On that day we saw 
a flock which may have been a mile long and nearly as broad; there 
must have been in that flock four or five thousand! The sum total 
of their notes sounded at times like the wind whistling through the 
ropes of a thousand-ton vessel; at others the sound seemed like the 
jingling of multitudes of sleigh-bells. The flock soon after appear- 
ing would subdivide into squadrons and smaller assemblies scattering 
over the island [Caribou Island] and feeding on the curlew-berries 
now ripe.” 
Coues, who was in Labrador in 1860, says that the Curlew “arrived 
on the Labrador coast from its more northern breeding grounds in 
immense numbers, flying very swiftly in flocks of great extent. These 
immediately broke up into smaller companies, and proceeded at once 
in search of food. ‘They remained but a very short time. .... For two 
or three days before their final departure, we had noticed them all 
moving directly southward, flying very high in the air in loose strag- 
gling flocks, with a broad extended front.” 
Stearns says the Eskimo Curlew were “formerly abundant; now 
common in the interior in the fall.” Turner, whose investigations 
extended from June 15, 1882, to October 3, 1884, states that they 
are ‘plentiful in the fall in the southern portions and as far north 
as Davis Inlet; they do not halt above this latter place while on their 
way southward.” 
The Bowdoin college expedition brought back the skins of two 
males and one female from Holton Harbor taken on August 20, 1891. 
Bigelow in 1900 ‘‘heard of only about a dozen, which were seen 
on the coast this fall.” Of these he saw five. He states that he 
“made careful inquiries among the settlers and obtained the following 
rather interesting information: (1) the Curlew remained in their 
former numbers in spite of the persecution to which they were sub- 
jected until eight years ago [this would be 1892]. (2) They then 
appeared no more.” 
