Sept., 1921 ROCKY MOUNTAIN JAY IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 151 
eeeasion, I found young birds being fed on April 11; but my usual luck was to 
find three eggs, which are grayish, blotched rather heavily with purplish 
brown about the larger end. 
Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, April 11, 1921. 
A TWELVEMONTH WITH THE SHOREBIRDS 
By ALLAN BROOKS 
T WOULD be difficult in most localities to be able to study shorebirds dur- 
ing every month of the year; and the present notes owe whatever interest 
they may possess to the fact that changes of location made it possible for 
me to keep in touch with my favorite group of birds during the whole of the 
year 1920. 
The last days of December, 1919, found me at Comox, on the east coast of 
Vancouver Island. The fall and early part of the winter had been of excep- 
tional severity ; even here on the seacoast there had been over twenty degrees 
of frost, and I hardly expected to see much in the way of Limicolae. Yet 
while waiting for Brant on a collection of bars some miles out to sea, large 
flocks of Black Turnstones, Sanderlings, and Dunlins were constantly in evi- 
dence. Among the first named, seeking their food on the stony shores instead 
of the tidal flats, were several Aleutian Sandpipers, one of which I secured. 
A large plover which was either a Black-bellied Plover or a Surfbird flew low 
over the water, but the sun-wash on the water made it impossible to be posi- 
tive of its identity. J think, however, from its silence that it was a Surfbird. 
Anyway there were five different species of shorebirds on that island on that 
cold winter’s day ; and a few days later, January 2nd, I saw Killdeers and Wil- 
son Snipe on the estuary of the Courtenay River, making seven species winter- 
ing at Comox—not bad for latitude 50°! 
The first migrating shorebird arrived on April 9, a Greater allows 
and a few days later I left Comox for Masset, Queen Charlotte Islands, some 
hundreds of miles farther up the coast. I arrived there April 15 and as the 
latitude was 54° I did not expect much migration for about a month. Here a 
surprise awaited me; for the movement of shorebirds was in full swing before 
the end of April, at its height by May 7, and mostly over by the middle of that 
month. , 
The following probably all wintered at Masset, though all were not iden- 
tified until May 2: Black Oystereatcher, Black Turnstone, Dunlin, Aleutian 
Sandpiper, and probably Sanderling. The first undoubted migrants were 
Greater Yellowlegs, on April 22, and Least Sandpiper April 26. Semipalmated 
Plover and Western Sandpiper came in on the 29th; and the next day brought 
Black-bellied Plover, Long-billed Dowitcher, and Surfbird, all in flocks and in 
high plumage. 
The Surfbirds were in a flock of one hundred and fifty cr more and may 
have arrived before, or even wintered, as I have a specimen taken here about 
the middle of April. They were not seen again, but all the other species got 
