OP THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 155 



background. At intervals, their clear, mellow, and melancholly note rises for a 

 moment, and then the bird apparently sinks into a day-dream, and remains 

 motionless for some time, until he is prompted to assure his partner of his presence 

 by another call. The male at this season has a brighter plumage than the 

 female, and in places little frequented by man he becomes very unsuspicious : 

 near villages, however, he is always on the look-out, and is difficult to approach 

 even when he is found by his nest. Towards the end of May and during the 

 first weeks of June the males utter a clear, rich song, which is frequently heard 

 during the twilight of the short Arctic nights. When I was camping at the 

 Yukon mouth during the last of May and the first part of June, 1879, these birds 

 were scattered all about in the vicinity of the tent, and frequently during the 

 middle of the night the song was heard close by, and was exceedingly sweet and 

 musical. One night in particular I remember lying awake, listening to the usual 

 continuous faint clicking among the disintegrating ice in the river, which seemed 

 to make the silence still more marked, when, suddenly, just at the back of the 

 tent, arose the clear, plaintive note of the Golden Plover, which may be 

 represented by the syllables too-lee-e. Soon after, in the same sweet, musical 

 tone, was uttered a marvellously harmonious succession of notes, which I wrote 

 down at the time, listening to the song as it was repeated again and again, and 

 ascertaining the exact number of syllables. These, I find, are only imperfectly 

 represented as follows : TEE-lee-lEo, tu-lee-lee, wit, wit, wit, wee-u wit, che lee-u 

 too lee-e. The last three syllables are the ones most commonly uttered, serving 

 as a call-note ; but the song in full is only repeated on special occasions, as 

 before remarked, being oftener heard during the still hours of the night than 

 during the day, if, indeed, it can be called night when the sun disappears below 

 the horizon for little over an hour." The American Golden Plover occurs on 

 migration throughout the Mississippi Valley and Manitoba as well as along the 

 coasts, on its way to and from its breeding grounds in the Arctic regions. Its 

 northward migration appears to begin in March, and to be continued until 

 the first week in May. The southward migration commences as early as the 

 middle of July in some years and lasts until the close of October or early in 

 November. Further south, Colonel Feilden records some very interesting par- 

 ticulars relating to the migrations of the American Golden Plover on the island 

 of Barbadoes. He writes,* " Stragglers arrive as early as July and the beginning 

 of August, but the main flights come with the first heavy weather after the 27th 

 of August, and long experience and observation proves that this date is kept year 

 after year with wonderful accuracy. The course of all the migratory Charadriidae 

 across Barbadoes in the autumn is from the north-west to south-east, and if the 

 wind blows from south-east the birds are brought down to the island, for it 

 appears to be a well-established observation that birds prefer migrating with a 

 ' beam ' wind. A shift of wind from the north-east, with squally weather to the 



* Ibis, 1889, pp. 490, 491. 



