1 66 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



70. Bartramia longicauda (Bechst.). 

 Bartramian Sandpiper. Upland Plover. Field Plover. 



Transient visitor, formerly not uncommon in autumn. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



April 20, 1 869, one heard, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 



May 6, 1870, one ad. male ' taken, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 



July 26, 1894, one seen. East Watertown, W. Brewster. 

 September 14, 1890, one heard, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 



Whenever I have occasion to spend the month of August in Cambridge, I 

 am nearly sure to hear — although much less frequently now than formerly — 

 the rapid, musical flight-calls of Upland Plover migrating by night, or in the 

 early morning, low over the house. Some of these passing birds were accus- 

 tomed, up to within a very few years, to resort for food and rest to a rough, 

 boggy pasture which bordered the Brighton side of the Longfellow Marshes. A 

 broad extent of gently sloping mowing fields in the eastern part of Waltham, 

 not far from the Gore estate, also used to attract a good many others, as I am 

 informed by Mr. Outram Bangs. I have found single birds in late April or 

 early May, in the grass fields near Vassall Lane, as well as in those to the west- 

 ward of Hill's Crossing, Belmont, but that happened more than thirty years ago. 

 The places just mentioned are the only ones in the Cambridge Region where I 

 have ever known the Field Plover to alight. I fear that it no longer frequents 

 any of them, but its voice, as I have just said, has not wholly ceased to be heard 

 overhead. It is one of the most pleasing as well as characteristic of the sounds 

 which mark the near approach of autumn. 



The Bartramian Sandpiper is prized by epicures for the delicacy of its flesh, 

 and the zeal with which it is pursued by sportsmen and market hunters will 

 account, no doubt, for the fact that the beautiful bird has diminished alarmingly 

 in numbers within recent years, not only in Massachusetts but elsewhere along 

 the Atlantic coast and also over most of its extensive range in western North 

 America. Within my recollection Field Plover have nested plentifully on the 

 grassy hills of Worcester County, Massachusetts, and on those of southern 

 Maine and New Hampshire, but there are few localities in New England where 

 one can be sure of finding the birds in summer at the present time. 



iNo. 3S10, collection of William Brewster, 



