46 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 



always running, chasing each other, very 

 quarrelsome, lighting all the time. They 

 were in poor condition, so lean that the men 

 did not shoot them after the first day, a fact 

 which gives your correspondent great satis- 

 faction. They are still there ! My brother 

 came from the Shoals yesterday, and says 

 that the place is alive with them, all the 

 seven islands." 



Similar facts were reported as I began 

 in one way and another to learn from 

 different points along the coast; especially 

 from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where hun- 

 dreds of the birds were seen on the 28th and 

 29th of November. The reporter of this 

 item 1 pertinently adds: "Such a flight of 

 killdeer in Maine where the bird is well 

 known to be rare has probably not oc- 

 curred before within the memory of living 

 sportsmen." Here, as at the Isles of Shoals, 

 the visitors were at first easily shot (they are 

 not counted among game birds where they 

 are known, on account of their habitual lean- 

 ness, I suppose); but they had landed upon 

 inhospitable shores, and were not long in 



1 Mr. N. C. Brown, in The Auk, January, 1889, 

 page 69. 



