1889. ] General Notes. 69 
reluctance to kill him, which I did by striking him gently on the head 
with a short stick. Ornithologists who examined him pronounced him 
the Northern Phalarope. At their request I make this note of the facts. 
—W.C. Prime, New York City. 
Occurrence of the Western Sandpiper (Hreunetes occidentalis) in Num- 
bers on the Coast of Massachusetts.—Among some Waders collected in 
1888 on Monomoy Island, near Chatham, Massachusetts, I find four 
unmistakable specimens of Hreunetes occidentalis. Three of them, all 
females, were taken by Mr. Jj. C. Cahoon, one July 19, the other two Sept. 
19. The fourth, a male, was shot Sept. 1 by Mr. Whiting. The July 
bird is an adult in richly colored and but little worn breeding plu- 
mage. The others are young in summer dress. 
Mr. Cahoon tells me that he killed many specimens of the EF. occéden- 
talis at Monomovy during July, August, and September, 1888, but suppos- 
ing at the time that they were merely large, long-billed examples of £. 
pusillus, he preserved only the three above mentioned. His impression 
is that they were nearly as numerous at times as &. pusillus. There 
is, I believe, but one previous record of the occurrence of EF. occidentalis 
in Massachusetts, viz., that by Mr. Henshaw* of the capture of a speci- 
men on ‘‘Long Island, Boston Harbor, Aug. 27, 1870.”—WILLIAM BREw- 
STER, Cambridge, Mass. 
Sandpipers at Sea—A Correction.—On looking at my note on ‘Sand- 
pipers at Sea’ in ‘The Auk,’ Vol. III, I find at commencement of the first 
paragraph on page 132 ‘‘The fastest run up to 12 M. on May 8, was 582 
miles.” This should read ‘‘The dzs¢tauce run”, etc. 582 miles a day foran 
old French steamer would be pretty good work.—Wmn. A. JEFFRIES, 
Boston, Mass. , 
Remarkable Flight of Killdeer (#g7alitis voctfera) near Portland, 
Maine.— On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 28, 1888, several 
flocks of Killdeer were seen by Captain Trundy, of the U.S. Life Saving 
Service, near his station, on the extreme point of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. 
Twenty birds, which were shot down without difficulty, were sent to 
Portland and offered for sale at one of the markets. On the following 
day, Captain Trundy tells me, hundreds of the Plover were to be seen 
along the shores of the Cape, and on Richmond’s Island, a mile or two 
west of the station. They disappeared on November 30, leaving strag- 
glers behind, however, the last of which was shot by one of the Life Say- 
ing crew on December 4, and kindly presented to me. 
Such a flight of Killdeerin Maine—where the bird is well known to be 
rare—has probably not occurred within the memory of living sportsmen. 
It is doubtless to be attributed to the violent northerly storm that pre- 
vailed in eastern North America on November 25, 26 and 27.—NATHAN 
CLIFFORD Brown, Portland, Maine. 
*Auk, Vol. II, No.4, 1885, p. 384. 
