MIGRATION OF THE PACIFIC PLOVER TO AND FROM 

 THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 1 



By Henry W. Henshaw. 



Since primitive times the phenomenon of bird migration has 

 excited peculiar interest, and although much of the mystery formerly 

 attaching to it has been dispelled by the prosaic facts brought to light 

 by modern investigations, it still presents enigmas to stimulate the 

 imagination and invite study. How birds migrate is now beginning 

 to be understood, and the present practice of tabulating dates of 

 arrival and departure and collating the facts gathered by numerous 

 observers in different parts of the country is likely ere long to give 

 us the solution of many as yet unsolved problems. Why birds mi- 

 grate is quite another question, likely to resist satisfactory solution 

 for some time to come for, were there no other reason, from the very 

 nature of the case we can have comparatively few facts to guide us, 

 and speculation must largely take the place of deduction. 



When we consider the number of miles traveled, the widely differ- 

 ent character of the regions chosen for summer and winter abodes, 

 and the perils necessarily attending the passage between them, the 

 migration of no other of our birds appears so wonderful as that of 

 the golden plover. In part the migration route of the eastern form 

 of the golden plover {Charadrius dominicus) is well understood, 

 and those interested in the subject are referred to a suggestive paper 

 by Austin H. Clarke 2 on the probable method by which the bird 

 is guided safely across the Atlantic from Nova Scotia to South 

 America. In the present paper will be presented such facts in regard 

 to the migration of the Pacific plover ( Charadrius dominicus fulvus) 

 as the author was able to gather during his stay in the Hawaiian 

 Islands — from 1894 to 1904 — together with certain deductions there- 

 from. 



1 Reprinted by permission, after author's revision, from The Auk, a quarterly journal 

 of ornithology, Cambridge, Mass., vol. 27, No. 3, July, 1910. 



2 Auk, pp. 134-140, 1905. 



97578°— sm 1910 35 545 



