BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 345 



that he never knew before that the people of New York would 

 eat Plover. Mr. M. M. Boutwell records a great flight of the 

 Golden Plover which came to Clark's Hill, Lunenburg, Mass., 

 near Fitchburg, in 1851. This is a large, high hill, and the 

 birds came there in the fall after a hard easterly storm. They 

 stayed about the hill feeding for a few days, and Mr. Boutwell 

 and a hunting companion, George Smith, shot many of them 

 at two different trips. Firing into the flocks did not seem to 

 disturb them much, for they would simply rise in the air, 

 make a wide circle and alight again only a few rods from their 

 starting place. Mr. Boutwell says that there were so many 

 that he could not even attempt to estimate their numbers. 

 Mr. Lewis Stone of Ipswich says that about the last of August 

 1852, a tremendous flight of Golden Plover landed on the coast. 

 They came over the hills in such numbers and so fast and 

 low that any one who went there seemed in danger of being 

 struck by birds in full flight. A three days' rainstorm was 

 blowing. On the first day the wind was northeast, the second 

 day east and the third day southeast. The next day was 

 Sunday, and on Monday the Boston market was so over- 

 stocked with birds that the marketmen would give only five 

 cents apiece for them, and a Mr. Newell of Ipswich, a market 

 hunter, gave up gunning for a time, because there was no sale 

 for birds. Mr. Henry Shaw tells me that "soon after 1860," 

 a great flight of these birds swarmed over the fields and hills 

 south of Worcester. On the first day he and one other hunter 

 alone found them, but on the second day nearly every man 

 and boy who heard of it and could secure a gun was out shoot- 

 ing. This probably was a part of the great flight of 1863. 

 Mr. Winslow of Nantucket well remembers this flight (August 

 29, 1863), when Golden Plover and Eskimo Curlews landed on 

 the island in such numbers as to " almost darken the sun." Be- 

 tween seven and eight thousand of these birds were killed on 

 the island and on Tuckernuck. All the powder and shot on 

 Nantucket were expended, and the gunners had to send to 

 the mainland for more. After that the wind changed to the 

 southwest, and there was good shooting for two weeks. Sep- 

 tember 5, 1863, an immense flight landed on Cape Cod and 



