76 NORTH AMERICAN SHOREBIRDS. 



shores of Labrador (Coues). During the following two weeks they 

 crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence and made their long ocean flight 

 and by the end of another fortnight they were at the winter home in 

 Argentina (Sclater and Hudson). Dates of arrival along this course 

 are: Indian Tickle Harbor, Labrador, August 16, 1860 (Coues); 

 Houlton Harbor, Labrador, August 20, 1891 (Norton); Nantucket, 

 Mass., average August 29, earliest August 18, 1898 (Mackay); Bar- 

 bados, West Indies, August 27, 1886 (Manning); Amazon River, Sep- 

 tember 4, 1830 (Pelzeln); Concepcion, Argentina, September 9, 1880 

 (Barrows). Some dates of the last seen are: Fort Churchill, Kee- 

 watin, September 1, 1884 (Bell); Newfoundland, to end of Septem- 

 ber (Reeks); Saybrook, Conn., October 13, 1874 (Merriam); Barba- 

 dos, West Indies, November 4, 1886 (Manning). Many curlews 

 migrated south along the west coast of Hudson Bay, before they 

 turned east to the Atlantic and some of these seem to have wandered 

 occasionally southward and given rise to such records as Kingston, 

 Ontario, October 10, 1873 (Fleming); Erie, Pa., September 17, 1889 

 (Sennett) ; and a few fall records around Lake Michigan. 



The Eskimo curlew is rapidly approaching extinction, if indeed 

 any still exist. In the early sixties MacFarlane found them breeding 

 abundantly on the Barren Grounds near Fort Anderson, while Coues 

 reports thousands passing south along the Labrador coast in the fall; 

 in the early seventies Coues found them equally abundant passing 

 north through South Dakota in the spring. Ten years later they 

 were still common in their winter home in Argentina, and natural- 

 ists who visited the Labrador coast at this time record them as 

 present in flocks but not in numbers as seen by Coues. By 1889 

 only a few flocks were seen, and within the next half dozen years the 

 flights ceased. During the last fifteen years the species has been 

 recorded only a few times and apparently only three times in the 

 ten years previous to 1909: Tuckernuck Island, Massachusetts, eight 

 birds August 24, 1897 (Mackay) ; Nantucket, Mass., two, August 18, 

 1898 (Mackay); northeastern coast of Labrador, about a dozen the 

 fall of 1900 (Bigelow). The latest records are those of two birds 

 shot August 27, 1908, at Newburyport, Mass. (Thayer), and one 

 September 2, 1909, at Hog Island, Maine (Knight). The disappear- 

 ance of the Eskimo curlew has given rise to much speculation as to 

 the probable cause. A simple explanation is that during recent 

 years, especially since 1880, its former winter home in Argentina has 

 been settled and cultivated, while its spring feeding grounds in 

 Nebraska and South Dakota have been converted into farm land. 



[European Curlew. Numenius arquatus (Linn.). 



This Eastern Hemisphere species breeds from Great Britain to southern Russia, 

 the White Sea, and the Ural Mountains. It winters in Great Britain and occurs at 

 this season from the Mediterranean to the south end of Africa. 



It is probable that one specimen of this curlew was collected on Long Island in 

 1853 — its only North American record.] 



