The Hudsonian Curlew 61 



few Hudsonian Curlew migrate as far east as Labrador; the species has never 

 been common there, but since the disappearance of the Eskimo Curlew it 

 seems to have increased. At Nantucket, Mass., Mr. Mackay gives the earliest 

 date of arrival as July 13, and the average as July 20; Dr. Bishop reported 

 it as arriving on the coast of North Carolina on July 22, 1904. On the New 

 England coast the heavy flights often occur in September, and young birds 

 often linger until well into October. The southward movement in the fall is 

 very deliberate, and the last of the birds do not pass through the West Indies 

 to South America until November. As with all the shore birds, the early 

 flights are composed almost entirely of adult birds, and the flights of young 

 birds follow, on an average, about a month later. 



The Pacific coast nights occur on corresponding dates. The early flights of 

 adults reach California about the middle of July; and on the coast of Peru they 

 make their appearance early in August. Young birds are common about Nome, 

 Alaska, until the first of September, when large numbers are brought into the 

 markets, with a few Bristle-thighed Curlew; they do not entirely disappear 

 from California until November. 



Very little seems to be known about the nesting habits of the Hudsonian 

 Curlew. Mr. MacFarlane found them breeding on the treeless Arctic tundra 



near the mouth of the Anderson River, where he took several 

 Nest sets of eggs late in June and early in July; the nests were merely 



depressions in the ground lined with a few withered leaves. 

 Mr. J. 0. Stringer described a nest which he found on .the lower Mackenzie 

 River as a pile of grass, moss and weeds on an island in the river. Mr. Joseph 

 Grinnell reported this species as breeding in the Kowak Valley, Alaska, between 

 June 14 and 20, 1899. The eggs vary in color from a creamy drab to a brownish 

 buff, and are more or less heavily spotted with various shades of brown. The 

 downy young have apparently never been described, and nothing seems to be 

 known about the early plumage changes. Young birds in the fall can be dis- 

 tinguished from adults by their shorter bills and by the conspicuous buff spots 

 on the upper parts. 



The Hudsonian Curlew is more of a littoral species than either of the others, 

 and seems to prefer to frequent and feed on the seacoast. At low tide it 



resorts to the recently uncovered flats and beaches, where it 

 Habits can pick up marine insects, worms, and small crustaceans 



Mr. George H. Mackay says of its feeding habits in Massachu- 

 setts: "The Hudsonian Curlew is a tide bird, frequenting the sand flats near 

 the edge of the water, when they become uncovered, and resorting to marshes 

 and uplands when driven from the former by the in-coming tide. They feed 

 on fiddler crabs, grasshoppers, and the large gray sand spiders (Lycosa) which 

 live in holes in the sand among the beach grass adjacent to headlands, huckle- 

 berries, which they pick from the bushes, and beetles {Lachnosterna, Scara- 

 bseidae), all of which are usually mixed with coarse gravel. When a flock of 



