BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



curlews, has not been common in migrations on the Massa- 

 chusetts coast within the memory of old gunners. It is 

 now merely casual. Mr. Mackay refers to it as follows : 

 " Only rare stragglers left, less than half a dozen having 

 been taken in Massachusetts in twenty years. Very few 

 left in South Carolina, where they were formerly very 

 abundant." 



The Hudsonian or jack curlew was a very abundant spe- 

 cies sixty-five or seventy years ago. " On Nantucket and 

 Tuckernuck they were then shy, as now. They gradually 

 decreased until about fifteen years ago. After that about 

 one hundred and fifty birds appeared annually in July and 

 remained through the summer. A few are killed each year, 

 but the numbers remain about the same. They are the 

 most common curlew now on Nantucket. They are much 

 fewer now in the Boston market than in former years." 

 (Mackay.) 



The Eskimo curlew, or doughbird, was once an abundant 

 migrant. This curlew is the most highly esteemed by epi- 

 cures of all shore birds ; for this reason it has been hunted 

 incessantly whenever it appears. "About 1872 there was 

 a great flight of these birds on Cape Cod and Nantucket ; 

 they were everywhere. Enormous numbers were killed. 

 They could be bought of boys at six cents apiece. Two 

 men killed three hundred dollars' worth of these birds at 

 that time." (Gerry.) "Eskimo curlew, once common, 

 have not been seen on Nantucket or brought into the Bos- 

 ton market as taken in Massachusetts (except an occasional 

 bird) for a number of years." (Mackay.) "Almost ex- 

 tinct." (C. L. Perkins, Newburyport.) These birds are 

 either nearly extinct in the east, or are avoiding our coasts 

 in the migrations. Mr. Mackay says that the Eskimo cur- 

 lew and the golden plover have dropped off 90 per cent in 

 fifty years, and that in the last ten years 90 per cent of 

 the remaining birds have disappeared. These two species 

 almost invariably migrate together, and so are subject to 

 equal decimation from gunners. 



The Hudsonian godwit, or " goose bird," as it was called 

 by the Massachusetts gunners, was once perhaps as abundant 



