No. 4.] DECREASE OF BIRDS. 465 



a.s any of the larger shore birds on the coast. "This bird 

 was as plentiful as any bird I ever saw at Ipswich sixty years 

 ago. I have not seen one now for about thirty years." 

 (Gerry.) It is now growing very rare, and, together with 

 the marbled godwit, a famous bird of the olden time, is 

 seldom seen now on our coast. " Practically none left of 

 either species . " ( Mackay . ) 



Vast flights of the knot, or red-breasted sandpiper, used 

 to roam this coast. Fift}^ years ago this bird was very abun- 

 dant. "Now fallen ofl' 98 per cent, and the red-breasted 

 snipe or dowitcher is nearly in the same category.'' (Mac- 

 kay.) "I have seen the redbreast at Orleans flying in 

 clouds. My father killed two hundred in one day in 1848 

 at Nauset Harbor. I have not seen a bird now in fifteen 

 years in the same places. The marsh snipe (dowitcher) used 

 to be very plentiful at Ipswich and Wellfleet. I have not 

 seen one for ten years." (Gerry.) 



Previous to 1850, when the Cape Cod railroad was com- 

 pleted only to Sandwich, the knot was still a very abundant 

 bird at Chatham, Nauset, Wellfleet and Billingsg-ate, Cape 

 Cod. At the flats around Tuckernuck and Muskeeget 

 islands they were remarkably numerous. At this time the 

 vicious practice of "fire lighting" prevailed. Two men 

 together, one with a lantern and the other with a bag, would 

 creep on the flocks at night. While one man dazzled the 

 bird's eyes with the lantern, the other caught them, and, 

 biting their necks to kill them, put them into the bag. /Six 

 barrels of these little birds taken in this manner were seen 

 at one time on the deck of the Cape Cod packet for Boston. 

 Barrels of birds which were spoiled during the voyage were 

 sometimes thrown overboard in Boston harbor. The price 

 of the birds at that time was but ten cents per dozen.* 



The willet, or humility, as it is called along shore, one of 

 the great tattlers, was i)robably one of the birds referred to 

 by the early settlers, under the same name, as flocking on our 

 coasts in vast numbers. "These birds were very plentiful at 

 AVellfleet, and then; were a good many at Ipswich, but lately 



* " Observiitioiis on the knot," Geo. H. Mackay, Auk, Vol. X, January, 1893, 

 p. 2'.). 



