340 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



all, of the flock as they took wing and while flying, it was difficult to 

 catch the individual note. This note was constantly uttered while 

 the birds w^ere flying and was often audible before the birds could 

 be seen. Before alighting, as they descended and sailed, they gave a 

 soft Avhistle, somewhat like the note of the upland plover, according 

 to Prof. Bruner, while as they walked over the ground when feeding 

 they uttered a chirruping Avhistle, as if calling to each other. 



The Eskimo curlew was a bird of such food habits that it is a 

 distinct loss to our agriculture that it should have disappeared. 

 During the invasion of the Kocky Mountain grasshopper (Mela- 

 noplus spretus) it did splendid work in the destruction of grasshop- 

 pers and their eggs. Mr. Wheeler states that in the latter seventies 

 these birds would congregate on pieces of land w^hich had not been 

 plowed and where the grasshopper eggs were laid, reach down into 

 the soil with their long bills, and drag out the egg capsules, which 

 they would then devour with their contents of eggs or young 'hop- 

 pers until the land had been cleared of the pests. A specimen exam- 

 ined by Aughey in 1874 had 31 grasshoppers in its stomach, together 

 with a large numbeT of small berries of some kind.^ The bird in its 

 migrations often alighted on plowed ground to feed on the Avhite 

 grubs and cutworms turned up by the plow, or in meadow lands, 

 probably feeding on ants in the latter situation. Eichardson records 

 finding them feeding on large ants at Fort Franklin in late May, 

 1849.- The curlews were rarely seen near water, but w^ere upland 

 birds almost exclusively during the spring migration over the Great 

 Plains region. 



The flesh of the Eskimo curlew is said by all who have eaten it 

 to have been exceedingly well flavored, and, according to Mr. Hoag- 

 land, the equal if not the superior of any of our large shore birds. 



Although the Eskimo curlew is reduced to the point of extinction, 

 it is probably not yet absolutely extinct ; and if the pitiful remnant 

 of the species could be absolutely protected there is still a chance that 

 it might be enabled to recover and be saved. A campaign of edu- 

 cation as to the present desperate status of this bird by all ornitholo- 

 gists and true sportsmen, together with absolute legal protection 

 under high penalties everywhere, and a complete cessation of killing 

 these birds, even for specimens, might actually accomplish this 

 result. The recently enacted Federal law giving the control of 

 migratory birds to the General Government should be a large help 

 in such a campaign. 



1 Aughey, S. 1st Rept. U. S. Entomological Comm., Appendix, p. 55, 1878. 



2 Blake, Knox. Zoologist, p. 2408, 1870. 



