164 



MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



cxiiltirc new marshes and visit other coasts more productive of their favorite 

 fare. While skimming along the surface of the neighboring river, I have been 

 amused by the sociability of these v.'andering waders. As they course steadily 

 along, the party, never very numerous, would be joined by some straggling 

 Peeps, who all in unison pursue their route together like common wanderers, or 

 travellers, pleased and defended by the access of any company." ' 



Durin"' the earlier years of my own field experience a good many Summer 

 Yellow-legs continued to resort each season to the marshes along Charles River. 

 I also used to meet with them rather frequently about Fresh Pond and the 

 Glaciah.s, and I have a mounted specimen which I killed on August 24, 1875, 

 at the edoe of a stagnant pool on the Stimpson farm, Cambridge, not far from 

 the present point of intersection of Appleton Street and Huron Avenue. Mr. 

 John H. Hardy, Jr., includes the species in a manuscript list of the birds which 

 he has shot at Great Meadow, and he further informs me that it has been taken 

 at Spy Pond. 



The Lesser Yellow-legs is not known to have ever been a frequent visitor 

 in spring to any part of New England. I have but one record of its occurrence 

 at this season in the Cambridge Region, via., that of three birds which I found 

 feeding near the foot of Vassall Lane, in a meadow bordering Muskrat Pond, on 

 May 3, 1868. They were very tame and I watched them for a long time, stand- 

 ing within a few yards of them and making an absolutely certain identification. 



At most places on or near the coast of Massachusetts the Summer Yellow- 

 leg was very much more numerous than its larger cousin thirty or forty years 

 ago. If I am not greatly mistaken it has since become, throughout New Eng- 

 land, rather the less common of the two. Nor is this to be wondered at, for it 

 is one of the least suspicious of the larger waders and our gunners have never 

 shown it any mercy. The fact that its visits to the Cambridge Region have 

 been much less frequent of late than in earlier days is evidently due, however, 

 largely to the destruction, partial or complete, of so many of its former feeding 

 grounds, especially those once furnished by the extensive salt marshes bordering 

 on Charles River. I am told that a few birds continue to appear on the mud 

 flats of the Back Bay Basin, and I do not doubt that others are occasionally seen 

 in the Fresh Pond Marshes, although I have no records of the recent occur- 

 rence of the species in the latter locality. 



1 T. Nattall, Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada. The Water 

 Birds, 1834, 153-154- 



