552 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



unless Palmen is mistaken in his identification, dominions, not con- 

 tent with its wide habitat in the interior of Alaska, crosses the straits, 

 and breeds on the Chukchi Peninsula. 1 Thus the summer ranges of 

 the two forms actually inosculate, the Asiatic form crossing to Amer- 

 ica and the American form crossing into Asia — an apparent anomaly 

 in the case of geographic forms. 



Hawaiian plover breed in Alaska. — It is, of course, impossible to 

 absolutely identify the Pacific plovers breeding on the coast of 

 Alaska with the winter visitors to Hawaii, yet there are certain facts 

 tending to show that they are the same. (1) It is to be noted that 

 of the winter visitors to the Hawaiian Islands not one is an exclu- 

 sively Asiatic species. (2) The form of the wandering tatler, which 

 regularly migrates to and from the islands is not the Asiatic form 

 brevipes, but the American form minor. (3) There is evidence that 

 the bristle-thighed curlew, also a winter visitor to the islands, breeds 

 in Alaska, while it is not known to breed in Asia. As the two last- 

 named birds, which breed exclusively in America so far as known at 

 present, regularly winter in the islands, it is a fair inference, in the 

 lack of evidence to the contrary, that the plover and turnstone, as 

 also the other waders which winter causually in the islands, as the 

 sanderling, pectoral sandpiper, sharp-tailed sandpiper, jacksnipe, 

 knot, and others, also come from Alaska and not from Asia. 



Fall migration of plover. — For some reason or other plover appear 

 to arrive in the Commander Islands in fall very late, according to 

 Stejneger, not till after the 15th of September; the last ones were 

 observed in 1883 on the 28th of October. The turnstone, on the other 

 hand, touches the Commanders on its return trip much earlier, ac- 

 cording to the same author, as early as the last part of July. 



Arrival of plover in Hawaii in fall. — Passing now to Hawaii, a 

 small number of plover and also turnstones return there as early as 

 the middle or the latter part of August. By inference these are the 

 birds which leave for the breeding grounds earliest in spring, and so 

 are the first to complete their parental duties ; or, the first arrivals in 

 Hawaii may be individuals which made the journey to Alaska, but 

 for some reason did not breed, or whose nests were broken up, or 

 whose mates were killed, for the Arctic tundras have their bird trage- 

 dies, as have other lands. Just as the turnstones reach and leave the 

 Pribilofs in small straggling flocks, so they and the plover arrive in 

 Hawaii; and it appears further that in fall, as in spring, they get 

 into good condition for the flight, and then leave in no regular order 

 nor at any set time, but just as the impulse seizes them. 



Between the dates of early departure from Hawaii in spring and 

 of early arrivals in fall there is thus an interval of some four months 



1 Palmen, Vega-Exped. Vetensk. Iak-t., Vol. V, 1887, p. 342-348; also Stejneger, Auk, 

 1888, pp. 308-310. 



