Remarkable Flight of Killdeer (PEg-ialitis vocifera) near Portland, 
Maine. — On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 28, 1888, several 
flocks of Killdeer were seen by Captain Trundy, of the U. S. Life Saving 
Service, near his station, on the extreme point of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. 
Twenty birds, which were shot down without difficulty, were sent to 
Portland and offered for sale at one of the markets. On the following 
day, Captain Trundy tells me, hundreds of the Plover were to be seen 
along the shores of the Cape, and on Richmond’s Island, a mile or two 
west of the station. They disappeared on November 30, leavi-ng strag- 
glers behind, however, the last of which was shot by one of the Life Saw- 
ing crew on December 4, and kindly presented to me. 
Such a flight of Killdeer in Maine — where the bird is well known to be 
rare — has probably not occurred within the memory of living sportsmen. 
It is doubtless to be attributed to the violent northerly storm that pre- 
vailed in eastern North America on November 25, 26 and 27. — Nathan 
Clifford Brown, Porf/aaif, Ifawe. Auk., VI. Ja*. , 1889. p. ($ , 
Note on the Killdeer in Maine. — A detail which is perhaps worth 
preserving of the great flight of Killdeer ( Oxyechus vociferus) along the 
coast of Maine in 1888 has never found its way into print. This relates 
to the duration of the stay of the birds near Portland. A note by myself 1 
made the limit December 4. Dr. Arthur P. Chadbourne’s article, 2 dealing 
with the entire subject of the flight along the Atlantic coast, advanced 
the date to December 10 on evidence obtained from lighthouse keepers. 
About the middle of the following January, after my note had gone to 
press, G. E. Staples, surfman No. 2 of the Cape Elizabeth life-saving crew, 
reported to me that the plover were seen in twos and threes on the Cape 
up to December 25, 1888, and that his half-brother, W. D. Dresser, shot 
three of them on that day. Staples said that about twenty birds were 
noted after December 4, if all which he saw were to be considered as seen 
but once. It may be added that Hon. John M. Kaler, of Scarboro, told me 
at the same time that the Killdeer visited Prout’s Neck in that town during 
the height of the flight. — Nathan Clifford Brown, Portland , Maine. 
1 Auk, VI, p. 69. 
^ Auk, VI, p. 256. 
AH)t 2 b, Apr -19 II p, %4y. 
