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 THE HUDSONIAN GODWIT. 



LiMOSA HUDSONICA, SwAINS. 

 PLATE CCLVIII. Adult Male and Young Female. 



This species, which is of rare occurrence in any part of the United 

 States, is scarcely ever found farther south along the coast than the State 

 of Maryland. I had never seen it in the flesh, until I went to Boston 

 in 1832, when I found specimens of it in the market late in Septem- 

 ber. An old gunner in my employ brought me eight or ten in the course 

 of a month, but they Avere all young birds. From one of them my son 

 drew the figure in the plate. While I was at Pictou Professor Mac- 

 CuLLocH presented me with a pair of adult birds in beautiful plumage. 

 When we were on our way towards Labrador, the fishermen and inliabi- 

 tants of the Magdeleine Islands, who gave the name of Curlews to the 

 Godwits, assured me that this species breeds there in some marshes at the 

 extremity of the principal island, and that they were in the habit of kill- 

 ing them as soon as they were able to fly, when they were considered ex- 

 cellent food. We saw none, however, on our voyage farther north, and 

 in Labrador and Newfoundland nobody seemed to know them. 



My young friend Thomas MacCulloch, who gave me, in London, 

 several well-mounted specimens of this species, in the spring of 1835, con- 

 firmed the assertions of the people of the Magdeleine Islands, and informed 

 me that these birds breed at times on Prince Edward's Island, from which 

 they spread along the coast of Nova Scotia, where they remain until very 

 severe weather comes on, when they suddenly disappear. 



I have tried to give a good figure of the adult, and that made by my 

 son will, I hope, be considered faithful by those who are acquainted with 

 the bird in its autumnal plumage. The adult has been represented as lying 

 down, in order to shew the difference between this species and the Limosa 

 melanura of Europe, to which it is aUied, but from which it may readily 

 be distinguished at all periods by the black colour of the inner wing-coverts. 

 In the European bird these feathers are white, and the species does not 

 occur in the United States, perhaps not in any part of North America. 

 The females are rather larger than the males, but nothing is known re- 

 specting the nests or eggs. 



