No. 59.] BIRD NAMES. 203 



Range, as given in A. O. U. Check List : " Eastern Province 

 of North America, breeding in the Arctic regions, and migrating 

 south to the southern extremity of South America." 



A better bird for the table than either of the other curlews ; 

 much more of an upland species ; very fond of berries and grass- 

 hoppers, and frequently found in the company of Golden Plover 

 (migrating from the North at about the same time). Its visits 

 to us are more irregular and less protracted than those of No. 

 58, with which it has been sometimes confounded. 



ESQUIMAUX CURLEW (now written Eskimo Curlew. See 

 No. 58) : LITTLE CURLEW, and SMALL CURLEW (again see No. 

 58); and Nuttall (1834), having applied the name Esquimaux 

 Curlew to No. 58, called this the SMALL ESQUIMAUX CURLEW. 



At Pine Point, Me., in Massachusetts at Ipswich, Salem, 

 North Scituate, Provincetown, North Truro, North Plymouth, 

 West Barnstable, Chatham,* and Nantucket, and at Moriches, 

 L. I., DOE-BIRD f (written also Dough-bird). At Stratford, Conn., 



* This species appears on the more eastern uplands of Cape Cod the last 

 of August or during the early days of September, and if severe easterly 

 storms prevail, it arrives in very large numbers. The Hudsonian, No. 58, is 

 far less numerous here, and the Long-billed, No. 57, may now be called rare. 

 No. 59 is a great favorite with Boston epicures, and the gunners get from 

 seventy-five cents to a dollar apiece for them ; as a table dainty I consider 

 them superior to all other birds, but they should hang with the feathers on, in 

 a shady, breezy place, for four or five days before being cooked. 



t Other species have been credited with this name, but I do not remem- 

 l>er ever hearing it in actual use for any bird but the Eskimo, to which it 

 now, at least, most certainly belongs. Nuttall, who was, of course, thinking 

 more of the birds themselves than of their common names, and who did not 

 perhaps fully realize the importance of such names as bearing upon the science 

 itself, tells us that the three species Nos. 58, 59, and 60 were included " un- 

 der the general name of Doe-birds." It is hard to believe that the gunners 

 ever mixed up these birds so indiscriminately. It is possible, of course, that 

 some used the name as we use " bay-bird," " sea-coot," etc., but I am inclined 

 to think that " Doe-bird " was used then by intelligent gunners, as it is now, 

 for No. 59 only. Later writers more or less influenced perhaps by Nuttall's 

 testimony must also be referred to in this connection. De Kay, in Zoology 

 of New York, credits Nos. 59 and 60 with this name. Samuels, in Ornithology 



