330 FIELD ZOOLOGY. 



as nesting freely in the eastern states. Avocets, wood- 

 cocks, Bartram's sandpipers, the little spotted sand- 

 piper a bird of very common occurrence everywhere 

 long-billed curlews, killdeers, and the mountain plovers 

 nest as far south as Kansas in the Missouri valley, and 

 from there breed northward through the northwestern 

 states into northern latitudes as far as Labrador and 

 Nova Scotia. 



These birds of the sea- shore and the inland water 

 courses winter from our northern states southward into 

 Mexico, some of them going as far as Brazil. The 

 phalaropes, sea plovers as they are sometimes called, 

 winter to the south of our shores in southern Atlantic 

 or Gulf waters, preferring to spend the time of their 

 winter sojourn on islands rather than on the continent 

 shores. 



Like all birds not resident in any given locality, the 

 migratory Limicolae visit the states in our middle latitudes 

 twice a year, once in May, when they go to their breeding- 

 grounds north, and again in August or September, when 

 the cold weather of the North drives them south to their 

 winter homes. 



