GOD WITS. 99 



writes : " This rare bird appears only now and then 

 in England ; l one was shot in Dorsetshire, and the 

 specimen was in the collection of Marmaduke Tun- 

 stall (Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. i. p. 128) ; " two killed 

 at one shot on Cosmore Common, Revel's Inn (more 

 than twenty miles inland), March 1827 (J. C. Dale) ; 

 one shot at Wareham, 1 840 ; two seen on Smallmouth 

 Sands, Weymouth, in 1851 ; two shot at Gussage 

 All Saints (more than twenty miles inland), in 1870 

 (C. R. W. Waldy) ; one seen at Littlesea, Studland, 

 May 1882 ; and one in the possession of Mr. Garland 

 of Worgret Farm, shot some years ago on the Ware- 

 ham river. 



BAK-TAILED GODWIT. Limosa lapponica, (L.) 



Yarrell, iii. p. 494; Harting, p. 53; Dresser, viii. p. 203; Ibis 

 List, p. 177 ; Totanus rufus, Seebohm, iii. p. 156 ; Scolopax 

 novoboracensis, Pulteney's List, p. 14. 



The Bar-tailed Godwit is a spring and autumn 

 visitant, and a much commoner species than the 

 preceding. Mr. T. M. Pike has seen more than fifty 

 in a flock at Poole ; and in May 1876 shot a pair 

 there in full breeding plumage. Two frequented the 

 Abbotsbury decoy during the summer of 1860, but 



1 It is curious that Pulteney ( was seemingly unaware that at the 

 period at which he wrote the Black-tailed Godwit was to be found 

 breeding regularly in the marshes of the eastern counties. Although 

 Montagu, writing in 1813 (the date of the Supplement to his "Orni- 

 thological Dictionary "), remarked that in a late tour through Lincoln- 

 shire no trace could be found of the Godwit's breeding in the fens of 

 that county, its extinction as a breeding species in Norfolk, according 

 to Mr. Stevenson (" Birds of Norfolk," vol. ii. p. 249), was not effected 

 until between the years 1829 and 1835. 



