46 
ESQUIMAUX CURLEW. 
species which was kindly given me by my learned friend William Oakes, 
Esq., of Ipswich, Massachusetts, who had procured it in his immediate neigh- 
bourhood, where, as I have since ascertained, the Esquimaus Curlew spends 
a few days in early autumn, while on its way southward. During their short 
stay in that State, they are met with on the high sandy hills near the sea- 
shore, where they feed on the grasshoppers and on several kinds of berries. 
On this food they become fat, so as to afford excellent eating, in consequence 
of which they have probably acquired the name of “ Dough-bird,” which 
they bear in that district, but which is also applied to several other birds. 
How this species, manages to cross the whole extent of the United States 
without being seen after leaving Massachusetts, is to me very wonderful. 
On one occasion only have I ever had a glimpse of it. I was in company 
with my learned and generous friend John Bachman of Charleston, on one 
of the islands on the coast of South Carolina, whither we had gone with the 
view of watching the Long-billed Curlews ( Numenius longirostris). It 
was at the dawn of a fine day, when a dense flock uf the northern Curlews 
passed to the southward, near enough to enable us to ascertain the species, 
but so swiftly, that in a few minutes they were quite out of sight. 
On the 29th of July, 1838, during a thick fog, the Esquimaux Curlews 
made their first appearance in Labrador, near the harbour of Bras d’Or. 
They evidently came from the north, and arrived in such dense flocks as to 
remind me of the Passenger Pigeons. The weather was extremely cold as 
well as foggy. For more than a week we had been looking for them, as 
was every fisherman in the harbour, these birds being considered there, as 
indeed they are, great delicacies. The birds at length came, flock after 
flock, passed close round our vessel, and directed their course toward the 
sterile mountainous tracts in the neighbourhood ; and as soon as the sun’s 
rays had dispersed the fogs that hung over the land, our whole party went 
off in search of them. 
I was not long in discovering that their stay on this coast was occasioned 
solely by the density of the mists and the heavy gales that already gave in- 
timation of the approaching close of the summer ; for whenever the weather 
cleared up a little, thousands of them set off and steered in a straight course 
across the broad Gulf of St. Lawrence. On the contrary, when the wind 
was high, and the fogs thick, they flew swiftly and low over the rocky 
surface of the country, as if bewildered. Wherever there was a spot that 
seemed likely to afford a supply of food, there the Curlews abounded, and 
were easily approached. By the 12th of August, however, they had all left 
the country. 
In Labrador they feed on what the fishermen call the Curlew-berry, a 
small black fruit growing on a creeping shrub, not more than an inch or two 
