ESQUIMO WHIMBREL 207 
breed near the extremity, or beyond the extremity, 
of South America, It is very curious, to say the 
least of it, that the Arctic and Antarctic regions of 
America should possess the same species, and that, 
at opposite seasons of the year, it should winter in 
the same district, so far from the breeding-place of 
one set of individuals, and so near to that of the 
other! Captain Abbott observed the Hudsonian 
Godwit in the Falkland Islands in flocks in the 
month of May (see Ibis, 1861, p. 156). These could 
not have been Alaska birds, but were no doubt 
southern breeders on their way north, for that they 
could winter so far south seems incredible. 
ESQUIMO WHIMBREL 
Numenius borealis 
Above dark brown, each feather edged or spotted with pale buff or 
dirty white, becoming most strongly marked on the rump and upper 
tail-coverts ; wings uniform dusky brownish, narrowly edged with 
white ; tail buffy brown, transversely barred with dusky; beneath, 
throat white; rest of under surface pale buff, with more or less 
V-shaped dusky markings on the breast, flanks, and under tail-coverts ; 
axillaries and under wing-coverts pale chestnut, transversely barred 
with dusky ; length 11.6, tail 8.14 inches. Female similar. 
THE Esquimo Whimbrel, which, as Mr. Seebohm 
tells us, may be distinguished from all its congeners 
by having scarcely any traces of bars on its prim- 
aries and by the back of the tarsus being covered 
with hexagonal reticulations, migrates from the 
tundras of North America, where it breeds, to the 
southern extremity of South America. 
