The Bird Department 



By a. a. Allen, Ph.D. 

 Assistant Professor of Ornithology, Cornell University. 



OUR VANISHING SHORE BIRDS 



:r.*. 



WHEX our forefathers first turned their atten- 

 tion to the hunting of birds either for food 

 for sport, it is recorded that they found the 

 woods from Elaine to Florida teeming with wild turkeys ; 

 the air filled with clouds of wild pigeons, the lakes and 

 marshes covered with waterfowl, and the shores ani- 

 mated with countless thousands of snipe and plover. 



Today the turkey, in its wild state, is unknown except in 

 a few remote and inaccessible 

 places ; the last passenger pigeon 

 died a year ago in the Cincinnati 

 zoo ; the geese and the ducks are 

 so reduced in numbers that one 

 species, the Labrador duck, has 

 not been seen in forty-five years, 

 and another, the wood duck, has 

 been practically exterminated 

 over a large part of its range. 

 The same is true of the shore 

 birds. The Eskimo curlew is 

 almost extinct ; the long-billed 

 and Hudsonian curlews, the 

 avocet, the stilt, and the godwits 

 are found only in small num- 

 . bers, and even amongst the 

 smaller species single birds now 

 grace the shores where once 

 great flocks assembled. 



The cause is not difficult to 

 discover. The cutting of the forests and the increase 

 in the numbers of hunters were sufficient to destroy the 

 turkey; the gregarious habit of the passenger pigeon, 

 making possible the slaughter of countless thousands on 

 the breeding grounds, annihilated this species ; the auto- 

 matic gun, the market hunter, the greed of the sports- 

 men, and the shooting of mated birds in the spring of 

 the year wiped out the waterfowl. At this point the vast 

 army of gunners, having no other game to hunt, equipped 

 with automobiles so that no place is inaccessible, turned 

 loose on the shorebirds, and little wonder is it that the 

 snipe and plover decreased and are now rapidly disap- 

 pearing. First the larger species gave way before the 

 onslaught and now the smaller, until even the little "sand 

 peeps" that trot along the beaches and chase the receding 

 waves are not safe from destruction. The small boy 

 with his newly acquired rifle, and the amateur with his 

 shotgun pick them off as they stand in a row asleep on 



the sandpit. The professional hunter fires into their 

 densely massed ranks as they swing by to see how many 

 he can kill at a single shot. 



This flocking habit has helped the near extinction of 

 other species as well, although the true sportsman, how- 

 ever great the temptation may be, never takes advantage 

 of it. But the number of true sportsmen is relatively 

 small, and the number of hunters who realize that to kill 



"SAXD PliEPS" IN FLIGHT 



These birds, the least and semi-palmated sand pipers fly in sucli flocks as shown in tlie photograpli. This 

 flocking habit has caused the near extinction of many species. Frequently a large number of a flock 

 are killed at a single shot by an unscrupulous gunner. 



a dozen birds at a shot provides insufficient sport for the 

 great reduction in the supply of game is still smaller. 

 With these birds the sport' of hunting is reduced to a 

 minimum, the lust of killing raised to a maximum, and 

 economy ranks lower than did forest conservation with 

 the early settlers. Far better that the temptation of 

 shooting into these flocks be removed from the unscrupu- 

 lous and that these birds be protected for all time. 



Among the "shore birds," however, there are two 

 species, the Wilson's snipe and the woodcock, which do 

 not have this flocking habit and which, except for their 

 small size, fulfill all the requirements of first-class game 

 birds. They lie close and unseen by the hunter until, with 

 a startling call or whir of the wings, they bolt into the 

 air on an erratic course which requires all the hunter's 

 skill to intercept. Even when traveling in scattered 

 flocks, they get up singly so that only one bird can be 

 killed at a shot, thereby yielding the greatest amount of 



911 



