CHARADRIIDA. 631 
THE ESKIMO CURLEW. 
NUMENIUS BOREALIS (J. R. Forster). 
This small American species is an occasional straggler to the 
British Islands, the first instance on record being that of a bird 
which was killed in Kincardineshire on September 6th 1855. On 
September 29th 1879 another, shot in Aberdeenshire, was sent for 
preservation to Mr. G. Sim, who also received an adult male from 
Kincardineshire on September 21st 1880. An example, said to have 
been forwarded from Sligo, was purchased in Dublin market on 
October 21st 1870, and afterwards presented by the late Sir Victor 
Brooke to the Museum of that city. According to the late Dr. 
Churchill Babington, two were obtained near Woodbridge in Suffolk 
in November 1852, only one of which is now in existence ; while he 
adds, on Hele’s authority, that a bird, which was not preserved, was 
killed on the river Alde some few years before 1870. The latest 
occurrence is that mentioned by Mr. Thomas Cornish, at Tresco in 
the Scilly Islands, on September roth 1887. 
The Eskimo Curlew appears to be merely a visitor to Greenland, 
but is widely distributed during the summer throughout the Arctic 
regions of America from Hudson Bay to Alaska ; only a few, how- 
ever, remain to breed in the latter as far south as St. Michael’s, 
though northward this is the most abundant member of the genus. 
It has wandered to the Tribilov Islands, but its representative 
in North-eastern Siberia, and southward by China and Japan to the 
