BIRDS OF ESSEX COUNTY. I 77 



107 [244] Erolia ferruginea (Briinn.). 

 Curlew Sandpiper. 



Accidental visitor from Europe. 



Samuels 1 "found a single specimen in a bunch of Sandpipers shot on Cape 

 Ann, in the autumn of [865, for sale in the principal market in Boston." One 

 was taken at Nahant Beach about 1869, and is "now [1879] in possession of 

 the city of Lawrence." 2 There is a female in the collection of the Peabody 

 Academy, at Salem, taken at Ipswich on October 2d, 1872, by R. L. Newcomb. 3 

 This is probably the bird referred to by Dr. Brewer 4 as having been shot at 

 Ipswich. Howe and Allen give only three other records for the State. 



108 [246] Ereunetes pusillus (Linn.). 

 Semipalmated Sandpiper ; Peep ; " Sand-peep." 



Abundant transient visitor; May 13 to June 14; (summer); July 10 to 

 October 30. 



The average date for the departure of this bird in the autumn is about 

 September 20th, after which very few are seen, although stragglers may be 

 found even to the last of October. My latest date, October 30th, is of a single 

 immature bird I saw at Ipswich Beach on that date, in 1904, and Mr. Harold 

 Bowditch saw four at Lynn Beach on October 23d. A few are not infrequently 

 found in the short interval between their spring and fall migrations — non-breed- 

 ing birds. 



The Semipalmated Sandpiper, the most common of all the shore birds, is 

 a frequenter of sandy beaches, although a few straggle into the sloughs in the 

 marshes. On the beaches, singly and in small or large flocks, it manages, not- 

 withstanding the persecution of the gunners, to glean an abundant living and 

 grow fat. The adults are generally extremely wary and know full well the dis- 

 tance a gun can carry when its possessor is walking on the beach, but they are 



1 E. A. Samuels : Ornithology and Oology of New England, p. 444, 1S67. 



2 Ruthven Deane : Bull. Nuttall Orn. Club, vol. 4, p. 124, 1879. 



3 R. L. Newcomb: Forest and Stream, vol. 22, p. 483, 1884. 



4 T. M. Brewer: Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. 17, p. 446, 1875. 



