Marbled Godwit (Llmosa Jedoa) 



Range: Breeds from valley of Saskatchewan south to North Dakota; 

 winters from southern Lower California, Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia to 

 Guatemala and Belize. 



The marbled godwit, one of the largest and finest of American shorebirds, 

 formerly nested in Nebraska and Iowa. A few may still breed in North Dakota 

 but the bulk of the species retire beyond our northern boundaries to rear their 

 young. Though in summer an inhabitant of the interior prairies and marshes, 

 the marbled godwit prefers to winter on the seacoast, and Cooke notes the re- 

 markable fact that it "presents the unique spectacle of a bird breeding in the 

 middle of the American continent and migrating directly east and west to the 

 ocean coasts." While it is easy to prove that the marbled godwit formerly was 

 much more abundant than it is now, it is doubtful if the bird ever existed in 

 numbers comparable to certain other shorebirds, as the curlews and various sand- 

 pipers. Wherever it was found, the bird carried with it its own death warrant 

 in its large size, excellent flesh, and its trusting disposition, which not only made 

 it easy to decoy but prompted it to return once and again at the call of wounded 

 comrades. Strict observance of the Federal regulation which prohibits the kill- 

 ing of this and certain other shorebirds until 1918, may possibly save the marbled 

 godwit from extinction, but friends of our shorebirds may well watch with 

 anxious foreboding the history of this bird during the next fe\v years. 



Heath H en {Tympaniichus cupido) 



Range : Island of Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts. 



So late as the first year of the present century the heath hen was still more 

 or less common in the middle and eastern states. Still earlier the bird was prob- 

 ably rather generally distributed over the territory east of the Alleghenies, We 

 have no reason to be proud of the course taken by legislation in favor of the 

 heath hen, though we need not go back to the last century for even more flagrant 

 examples of the failure of protective legislation. First, as is usual in such cases, 

 all legislation halted till the bird was well on the road to extinction. Then laws 

 were passed, adequate enough, if properly enforced ; but they were openly and 

 frankly ignored or repealed or modified no doubt under the time-worn arguments 

 of the present day : the importance to sportsmen of an open season ; the need for 

 meat; with the carollary, that the species at that particular period was in no dan- 

 ger. And the result was the same as in the case of the passenger pigeon, and as 

 it will be soon in the case of the prairie chicken. 



Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts, now holds the last pitiful remnant of 

 this fine game bird which, under the protection of the state, has increased from- 

 a few couples to about two hundred. How long this little band of survivors will 

 be able to hold fate at bay remains to be seen. It would seem to be the part of 

 wisdom to found other colonies and so increase the chances of survival. 



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