October, 1913 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
205 
Nesting well within the Arctic Circle, shore birds as a class travel the longest distances of any of our 
migratory birds, some going as far as Patagonia. This photograph shows some resting on a Florida key 
have spent t h e 
summer in north¬ 
eastern America 
proceed clown the 
coast line, paus¬ 
ing for rest and 
food as they reach 
various feeding 
grounds along the 
way. In the bays 
of Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island and 
Connecticut they 
are very common. 
Great South Bay, 
Long Island, is 
one of the favor- 
i t e places for 
them in the fall. 
Many soon pass 
on to the south, 
while others lin¬ 
ger from day to 
day, apparently 
loath to leave the 
northern lati¬ 
tudes. Some, in 
fact, stay through 
the entire winter 
unless driven 
away by stress of 
weather or the 
formation of ex¬ 
tensive ice areas 
which render the 
food 
i he black-bellied plover is eagerly sought 
by the shore hunters 
an impossible task. 
securing of 
Wild fowl summering in the north- 
central States and central Canada travel 
to the south in two great currents. One 
sweeps down the Mississippi Valiev to 
the sunken lands of Arkansas and the 
marshes of Louisiana and Texas. The 
other moves diagonally across the coun¬ 
try in a general line from the Great 
Lakes to the sounds and estuaries of 
Maryland and Virginia, thence they 
distribute themselves southward with 
the coming of still colder weather, 
locating in favorable places along 
the coast of Georgia and Florida. 
There is still another great distinctive 
movement in autumn. This consists of the birds of the far West 
which pass down the Pacific Coast region to California and 
Mexico. 
By March the wild fowl begin to move 
northward again, and the middle of May 
finds practically all the survivors once more 
on their northern nesting grounds. 
This general outline of the annual move¬ 
ments of our North American waterfowl is 
in the main also true of 
our shore birds; that 
is, they nest in the far 
North and spend the 
winter m onths in 
Southern latitudes. A 
At the left is a phalarope and on the right a 
godwit 
the South; these 
are the willets, 
woodcock, oyster- 
catch ers, one 
form of sandpi¬ 
per, and at least 
three species of 
plover. Like the 
wild fowl, how¬ 
ever, the shore 
birds appear in 
summer chiefly 
north of this 
country. About 
the lakes of the 
interior one may 
see them com¬ 
monly in the same 
regions as are oc¬ 
cupied by w i 1 d 
ducks. Myriads of 
them collect on 
the marshes of 
Hudson B a y 
n 0 r t h ward of 
York Factory, 
and I have found 
them on many a 
barren island 
along the coast of 
Maine and Nova 
Scotia. Com¬ 
mander Peary has 
said that he dis¬ 
covered shore 
birds brooding their eggs less than five 
hundred miles from the Pole. The nests 
were on the exposed beaches of the 
northernmost land where it slopes down 
into the Arctic Sea. All through the far 
North these birds are scattered. Trav¬ 
elers have found them equally common 
on the bleak Arctic Islands and the flow¬ 
ery tundras. It is among this class of 
birds that we find the most extensive 
travelers of any of the feathered hosts 
which annually surge back and forth the 
length of the continent. There are 
shore birds which nest beyond the Arctic- 
Circle that extend their autumn flight to 
points well within the tropics. 
The duration of the flight of the golden plover is one of the 
marvels of the bird world. Coming down from the Arctic regions 
through eastern Canada late in summer, these strong-winged 
Avers leave the land in southern Nova Scotia. Bravely they head 
out across the tumbling Atlantic and never again see shore until 
they sight the mangrove reefs of the Lesser Antilles or the coast 
of Brazil. Occasionally storms drive them westward to the 
Bermuda Islands or even to the coasts of the United States, 
(Continued on page 250) 
Some of the sandpipers prefer the seclusion 
of fresh-water streams 
few forms only nest in 
