328 



NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA. 



[NO. 27. 



Richardson gives a description of one killed at Great Bear Lake 

 May 14, 1826 ; " Ross listed the species as occurring commonly in the 

 Mackenzie River region north to Fort Simpson, where he had taken 

 it.^ A specimen (No. 19952) collected by him at Fort Simpson May 

 30, 1860, is still in the National Musemn. Baird, Brewer, and Ridg- 

 way record the capture of the species at Fort Rae and Big Island.^ 

 Macoun, under the name solitarius^ states that Spreadborough saw 

 numbers in the spring of 1897 at Edmonton, where he believed they 

 were breeding, and found the birds breeding at Jasper Lake, Al- 

 berta, in July, 1898.*^ Raine has recently recorded the discovery of 

 three sets of eggs of the solitary sandpiper in northern [now central] 

 Alberta in the summers of 1903 and 1904.^ 



While collecting in the mountains 15 miles south of Henry House, 

 Alberta, July 19, 1896, J. Alden Loring took a young bird of this 

 form. It was accompanied by the female parent, which was not 

 secured, but the male was taken on the following day. The birds 

 were in a meadow which had formerly been a beaver pond. 



Catoptrophorus semipalmatus inornatus (Brewster). Western Willet. 



This bird, a plains species, reaches the district now under review 

 only in Alberta. Merritt Cary heard its notes at Edmonton, May 9, 

 1903. Macoun records young found by Dippie at Buffalo Lake, July 

 4, 1895, and specimens taken by Spreadborough at Edmonton in the 

 spring of 1897/ 



Bartramia long-icauda (Bechst.). Bartramian Sandpiper. 



The upland plover occurs in small numbers in suitable places over 

 nearly the -entire region and evidently breeds throughout its Cana- 

 dian range. In 1901 we met with it only in the vicinity of Fort 

 Smith. Here I secured a female in a field on June 21, and while 

 hunting on the ' prairies ' several miles to the westward of the post 

 June 24 collected a male. He was first observed on the top of a dead 

 tree at some distance away, but soon left his perch and circled past 

 me, whistling loudly. His gullet was filled with grasshoppers. 



In 1903 we heard the notes of this bird a few miles north of Ed- 

 monton May 12, and saw 4 individuals in the valley of Sturgeon 

 River May 13. During their return trip my brother and Cary noted 

 the species at Athabaska Landing, where it was migrating abun- 



« Fauna Boreali-Americana, II, p. 393, 1831. 

 »Nat. Hist. Rev., II (second ser.), p. 285, 1862. 

 ^ Water Birds N. A., I, p. 280, 1884. 

 ^ Cat. Canadian Birds, Part I, p. 173, 1900. 

 ^ Ottawa Naturalist, XVIII, pp. 135-138, 1904. 

 f Cat. Canadian Birds, Part I, p. 176, 1900. 



