Issued April 8, 11)11 



United States Department of Agriculture, 



BUREAU OF BIOLOGICAL SURVEY Circular No. 79, 

 HENRY W. HENSHAW, Chief of Bureau. 



CUB VANISHING SHOREBIRDS. 



By W. L. McATEE, Assistant, Biological Survey. 



The term shorebird is applied to a group of long-legged, slender- 

 billed, and usually plainly colored birds belonging to the order 

 Limicola?. More than 00 species of them occur in Xorth America. 

 True to their name they frequent the shores of all bodies of water, 

 large and small, but many of them are equally at home on plains 

 and prairies. 



Throughout the eastern United States shorebirds are fast vanish- 

 ing. While formerly numerous species swarmed along the Atlantic 

 coast and in the prairie regions, many of them have been so reduced 

 that extermination seems imminent. The black-bellied plover or 

 beetlehead, which occurred along the Atlantic seaboard in great 

 numbers years ago, is now seen only as a straggler. The golden 

 plover, once exceedingly abundant east of the Great Plains, is now 

 rare. Vast hordes of long-billed dowitchers formerly wintered in 

 Louisiana ; now they occur only in infrequent flocks of a half dozen 

 or less. The Eskimo curlew within the last decade has probably been 

 exterminated and the other curlews greatly reduced. In fact, all the 

 larger species of shorebirds have suffered severely. 



So adverse to shorebirds are present conditions that the wonder is 

 that any escape. In both fall and spring they are shot along the 

 whole route of their migration north and south. Their habit of 

 decoying readily and persistently, coming back in flocks to the decoys 

 r.gain and again, in spite of murderous volleys, greatly lessens their 

 chances of escape. 



The breeding grounds of some of the species in the United States 

 and Canada have become greatly restricted by the extension of agri- 

 culture, and their winter ranges in South America have probably 

 been restricted in the same way. 



82306 Cir. 79 11 



