SUPPLEMENT TO BIRDS OF ESSEX COUNTY 



13 



and their plover-like cries are familiar sounds. Common Terns have increased 

 several fold and Least Terns have been seen. It is to be hoped that the various 

 species of terns that formerly bred back of the beach at Ipswich will return to 

 their old breeding-haunts. 



Among the ducks, there has been at times a marked increase in the number 

 of Red-breasted Mergansers. This may be partly accounted for by the protection 

 of that part of their breeding range comprised in the Island of Anticosti, the great 

 domaine of M. Meunier. 



The increase in the records of the European Widgeon is probably due merely 

 to greater skill in recognition of this bird. Birds in female or immature plumage 

 were formerly recorded as the American form of Widgeon ; now, by an examina- 

 tion of the axillary feathers the species can be identified with certainty. 



The Wood Duck, now preserved throughout the United States and Canada, 

 seems to have responded to the kindly treatment. Instead of being a " vanishing 

 bird," as it was called, it has already begun to increase. 



As a result of the new Federal laws there has been in the main a marked 

 increase in the number of smaller shore-birds. At times the beaches swarm with 

 Semipalmated Sandpipers, Sanderlings, and Semipalmated Plovers. On August 

 12, 1913, at Coffin's Beach, I watched a flock of fully 1500, nearly all Semipalmated 

 Sandpipers. Piping Plovers, for a number of years absent as breeders at Ipswich, 

 have again laid their eggs in this region. For most of the larger species, however, 

 it would seem as if the reprieve had come too late. Hudsonian Curlews, Knots, 

 Willets, and Godwits, far from increasing, have with difficulty held their own or 

 are decreasing in number. Dowitchers, however, have apparently increased, due, 

 I believe, to the fact that the opening of the shooting-season is deferred until 

 August 15. when most of these birds have passed for the South. The Upland 

 Plover is still at a low ebb but I have hopes that the tide has turned. Although 

 the smaller birds are so abundant some years, seasons of scarcity occur as before. 



One of the larger shore-birds, the Killdeer, now universally protected, irreg- 

 ular and accidental in former days in the County, has become within the last ten 

 years a regular summer resident and its numbers appear to be on the increase. 



Bob-whites have never recovered from the severe winter of 1903-04, and 

 although numbers have since been introduced into the County, they are by no 

 means a common bird. It is unfortunate that the introduced birds have been 

 largely of southern races, which, by interbreeding with our Bob-white, have prob- 

 ably decreased its resistance and themselves easily succumb to northern winters. 

 Many of these introduced birds, bred in confinement, show but little fear of man 

 and fall easy victims to pot-hunters. The severe winter of 1917-18 was undoubt- 

 edly fatal to many. 



