334 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



fields and on the dry burnt-off prairies, where they searched indus- 

 triously for insects. 



These flocks reminded the settlers of the flights of passenger 

 pigeons and the curlews were given the name of " prairie pigeons." 

 They contained thousands of individuals and would often form dense 

 masses of birds extending for a quarter to a half mile in length and 

 a hundred yards or more in width. When the flock would alight the 

 birds would cover 40 or 50 acres of ground. During such flights the 

 slaughter of these poor birds was appalling and almost unbelievable. 

 Hunters would drive out from Omaha and shoot the birds without 

 mercy until they had literally slaughtered a wagonload of them, the 

 wagons being actually filled, and often with the sideboards on at that. 

 Sometimes when the flight was unusually heavy and the hunters 

 were well supplied with ammunition their wagons were too quickly 

 and easily filled, so whole loads of the birds would be dumped on 

 the prairie, their bodies forming piles as large as a couple of tons of 

 coal, where they would be allowed to rot while the hunters proceeded 

 to refill their wagons with fresh victims, and thus further gratify 

 their lust of killing. The compact flocks and tameness of the birds 

 made this slaughter possible, and at each shot usually dozens of the 

 birds would fall. In one specific instance a single shot from an old 

 muzzle-loading shotgun into a flock of these curlews, as they veered 

 by the hunter, brought down 28 birds at once, while for the next 

 half mile every now and then a fatally wounded bird would drop to 

 the ground dead. So dense were the flocks when the birds were 

 turning in their flight that one could scarcel}^ throw a brick or missile 

 into it without striking a bird. 



The decade 1870-1880 witnessed the beginning of the diminution 

 of these great flocks of Eskimo curlew. In addition to the numerous 

 gunners who shot these birds for local consumption or simply for 

 the love of killing, there developed a class of professional market 

 hunters, who made it a business to follow the " flight birds " as they 

 made their annual journey across the State each spring. Mr. Mont 

 Wheeler, living near Norfolk, pursued this business during the lat- 

 ter seventies, and his observations, transmitted to me by Mr. L. Ses- 

 sions of that place, describe graphically the status of the bird at this 

 period, and also the typical methods of the market hunter in securing 

 these birds. 



The chief feeding grounds of these curlews at the time Mr. Wheeler 

 came to Nebraska (1877) was in York, Fillmore, and Hamilton 

 Counties, and their heaviest lines of northward migration across the 

 State were between the ninety-seventh and ninety-eighth meridians. 

 The birds were much less numerous north of the Platte Eiver than 

 on the South Platte feeding grounds, although they were noted there, 

 but not in large flocks. One spring, about 1879, while working on the 



