WATER BIRDS. 169 
Family 25. RECURVIROSTRIDZ. Stilts and Avocets. 
KEY TO SPECIES. 
A. Front toe fully webbed, hind toe present. Avocet. No. 89. 
AA. Front toes slightly webbed, no hind toe. Stilt. No. 90. 
89. Avocet. Recurvirostra americana (mel. (225) 
Synonyms: American Avocet.—Recurvirostra occidentalis, Vig., 1829.—Recurvirostras 
americana of most authors. 
Recognized at once by the sharp, slender, snipe-like bill turned up toward 
the tip very decidedly. It can be mistaken for no other bird, except possibly 
for the Black-necked Stilt, but the latter species has the bill slightly or not 
at all turned upward, and has the back of the neck clear black while the 
Avocet has the neck cinnamon or white. 
Distribution.—Temperate North America, north to the Saskatchewan 
and Great Slave Lake; in winter south to Guatemala and the West Indies. 
Rare in the eastern United States. 
One of our very rare waders, and apparently much less common now 
than formerly. “W. H. Collins records one specimen taken at St. Clair 
Flats in 1874, and preserved in the collection of the Audubon Club, in the 
Museum of the Detroit Scientific Association” (Gibbs, American Field, 
Nov. 10, 1894). Mr. B. H. Swales writes me from Detroit (May 28, 1906) 
“There is an Avocet at Campion’s which Collins mounted, and it may be 
the same bird that he is understood to have taken at the Flats. Campion 
tells me that when he came here he secured a lot of Collins’ birds and that 
there was a list with data, but this was destroyed.”’ According to Moseley 
there is, or was, a specimen in the Kent Scientific Institute at Grand Rapids, 
and Dr. R. H. Wolcott writes that the specimen was collected in that 
immediate vicinity. In November, 1905, I found a mounted specimen 
of the Avocet in the Kent Scientific Museum, bearing the catalogue number 
20220, but with absolutely no data from which its origin could be traced. 
There are several records for Toronto, Ont., a number for Wisconsin 
(Kumlien and Hollister p. 42), and it has been taken in Indiana, Ohio, 
and Illinois (Butler’s Birds of Indiana, 1897, p. 695). It is not known to 
nest in Michigan, and occurs probably only during the northward migration 
in May and the southward migration is September and October. It is 
an abundant species about the alkaline lakes of the Great Basin region of 
the west, and occurs frequently of late years in the irrigated regions of 
Arizona and southern California. It may nest anywhere in the United 
States. The nest is placed on the ground; the eggs are three or four, pale 
olive or buffy olive, thickly spotted with brown and black, and averaging 
1.93 by 1.35 inches. 
In habits the Avocet much resembles the Yellow-legs, frequenting sand 
bars, mud flats and the shallow margins of lakes and streams, where it 
feeds like a sandpiper on the minute animal life of the shores, or wades 
about in the water gleaning aquatic insects, crustaceans and other forms 
from the bottom.. Professor Aughey found many locusts in the stomachs 
of two taken in Sarpy county, Nebraska, in September 1874, and one taken 
in Richardson county, Nebraska in September 1873, had 71 insects of 
various kinds in its stomach (lst Rep. U. 8. Entom. Com. App. 2 p. 50). 
