BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 283 



History. 



Although this bird is found often in the interior of North 

 America, in New England it is confined mainly to the neighbor- 

 hood of the sea and largely to the salt marshes, but also fre- 

 quents sand bars and mud flats. It is an active little bird 

 usually keeping in companies, which run about nimbly and 

 fly very rapidly, performing varied evolutions in concert, as if 

 drilled to act together. In the breeding season it has a rather 

 musical flight song, which never is heard except in its northern 

 home so far as I know. 



The following notes throw some light on its history: 

 Abundant in autumn and winter along the whole length of 

 coast on sandy or muddy shores from Maine to mouth of 

 Mississippi (Audubon, 1835). These birds, with several others, 

 sometimes collect in such flocks as to seem at a distance a large 

 cloud of thick smoke (Wilson). Collect in such flocks as to 

 seem at a distance like a moving cloud (Nuttall, 1834). 

 Quite abundant in September; fifty-two killed with two barrels 

 (Giraud, Long Island, 1844). Abundant in spring and autumn 

 migration; on June 18, 18C8, saw and shot several on Ipswich 

 Beach (Maynard, 1870). Abundant on our shores (Samuels, 

 New England, 1870). Rare spring and not uncommon 

 autumn migrant (Hoft'mann, New England and New York, 

 1904). Rather local in October, very rare in spring (Knight, 

 Maine, 1908). Only four Massachusetts correspondents note 

 an increase of the Red-backed Sandpiper and forty-nine have 

 observed a decrease. Mr. E. W. Eaton of Newburyport snys 

 that he shot about one hundred out of one flock about 1893, 

 but in 1908 saw "only three or four bunches." Reports all 

 along the Atlantic coast, from Nova Scotia to Virginia, corrob- 

 orate the above. 



There seem to be two well-deflned migration routes of the 

 Red-backed Sandpiper, one from Alaska and Siberia down the 

 Pacific coast of North America, and one from Hudson Bay, 

 Ungava and the lands to the north dow^n the Atlantic coast. 

 A large part of the flight which concerns the gunners of Mas- 

 sachusetts comes down the west coast of Hudson Bay in the 



