No. 4.] DECREASE OF BIRDS. 463 



perhaps, the ' ' peeps " or smaller sandpipers, the smaller 

 plovers and the spotted and solitary sandpipers now seem 

 to hold their own very well, although the "peeps" and 

 sanderlings were once very much more abundant than now. 

 Turnstones are still not uncommon, both in spring and fall. 

 The black-bellied plover, or beetlehead, a bird formerly mi- 

 grating along our coast in enormous numbers, has decreased 

 rapidly since the middle of the last century. In 1842 three 

 men shot one hundred and twenty-one birds May 24, and 

 one hundred and fifty May 25, on Tuckernuck Island. In 

 1870 a law was passed prohibiting the shooting of these 

 birds in the spring migrations. The law was repealed in 

 1871, but afterward re-enacted, and since then the species 

 has increased somewhat.' Mr. Mackay says that never for 

 the last fifteen years have there been so many of these birds 

 as during the past two seasons, 1903 and 1904 ; and that 

 there is now a notable increase of young birds each fall. 

 The golden plover has not benefited much by this law. The 

 abundance of the Eskimo curlew and the golden plover is 

 largely governed by the amount of spring shooting done in 

 the Mississippi valley, as most of these birds come north 

 by that route. "The golden plover is now practically 

 eliminated from the east," says Mr. Mackay. This was 

 once one of the most abundant of our migrating birds, 

 coming at times in enormous flights, and fairly glutting the 

 markets. Mr. Henry Shaw tells me that at one time, prob- 

 ably soon after 1860, a great flight of these birds swarmed 

 over the fields south of Worcester, and that practically every 

 man and boy in the place who could get a gun was out 

 shooting them. There is no record of a single bird having 

 been killed there since. Mr. Mackay says that only about 

 a dozen golden plover were seen in the Boston market in 

 1904, up to September 16. 



The killdeer plover is said by old gunners to have been 

 common once on the coast, and occasionally plentiful in the 

 interior and along the Connecticut River. Several observers 

 confirm this. It was once not rare in some portions of 

 Worcester County, and common in Berkshire County ; it is 

 now rare everywhere, so far as I can learn. 



The long-billed curlew, or sicklebill, the largest of the 



