Fall migration.—Dates: Belfast, Ireland, August 25 to end of September; Portugal, September; Italy, September 15-October 30; Cyprus, September 2; Greece, arrives September; Tangier, September; Yarkand, August-September; Karachi, September; Gilgit, August-September; Selangor, August; Mergui Archipelago, November 6; Ceylon, October; Lower Pegu, August; Transvaal, November 24; Natal, October 18.
Casual records.—Aldabra Island, Madagascar, November 6; Madeira, April 30, September 22 and October 7 and November 27. New Zealand, Canterbury, February 3, 1902; April 5, 1903 (2); Otago, March, 1903; Grenada (Wells); Bering Island (Steller). There are several records for this species for North America, some dating back to the earlier days of American ornithology. In some cases the details are indefinite and can not be considered as absolutely trustworthy. Among the occurrences recorded are: Lesser Antilles, Grenada (Cory, 1892), and Carriacou (Clark, 1905); New Jersey, Great Egg Harbor, two in the spring of 1829, Long Beach, Barnegat Bay, July 29, 1904, and Tuckerton and Cape May (Stone, according to C. C. Abbott, 1868); New York, nearly a dozen specimens at Fulton market secured on Long Island (Giraud, 1844), Long Island (?) June 9, 1891; Shinnecock Bay, May 24, 1883; Connecticut, near Hartford, October 3, 1859, New Haven, August 30, 1886, and June, 1874; Massachusetts, Cape Ann, fall of 1865, East Boston, early May, 1866, Nahant, about 1869, Ipswich, about 1875, Cape Cod, about May 10, 1878, and Chatham, August 26, 1889; Maine, Scarboro, September 9, 1875 (?), and Pine Point, September 15, 1881; New Brunswick, Grand Manan; Nova Scotia, Halifax, October, 1864, and September, 1868; Ontario, Toronto, about 1886 (Fleming); and Alaska, Point Barrow, June 6, 1883.
Egg dates.—Full clutches on North Taimyr, June 24; Liakhof Isles, June 24; Taimyr, July 1 (incubated) and July 6 (fresh); Yenesei delta, July 3 and July 7.
EURYNORHYNCHUS PYGMEUS (Linnaeus)
SPOON-BILL SANDPIPER
HABITS
This unique little sandpiper has a very restricted breeding range in extreme northeastern Siberia, whence it migrates to southern Asia and wanders very rarely to extreme northwestern Alaska. Joseph Dixon (1918) says: "There are but three specimens claimed to have been taken in North America, as far as known to the author, with some doubt attached to the locality of capture of one of these." He has shown that the bird supposed to have been taken on the Choris Peninsula, Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, by Captain Moore, of the British ship "Plover," was really taken in northeastern Asia in 1849, and that no authentic record for North America has been established since that time until 1914. He says further:
The only well-established occurrence of the spoonbilled sandpiper in America is that vouched for by Fred Granville, of Los Angeles, California, who, on August 15, 1914, took two specimens at Wainwright Inlet, on the Arctic coast of Alaska. One of these specimens, a female, is now number 3552 in the collection of A. B. Howell, of Covina, California, while the other, a male, is number 1698 in the collection of G. Willett, of Los Angeles.
Referring to the capture of these two birds, he quotes from Mr. Granville's letter of January 9, 1918, as follows:
On August 15, 1914, I and my assistant hiked back of Wainwright to what I judged to be a distance of about 10 miles, traveling in a northerly direction. The tundra where I found the spoonbills was interlaced as far as the eye could see with little lagoons and long channels of water, and in this territory I collected the two spoonbills. These birds were shot out of a flock of possibly 10. I followed them for about an hour before I could get a shot at them. The birds would run along the tundra en masse and were undoubtedly gleaning food from the moss. The minute they would catch sight of me they would fly out of shotgun range. There were about six birds that looked to me through field glasses to be in markedly different plumage from the birds I shot. These six birds, immature as I supposed, seemed to be of a solid color, and that a dark gray. On the first shot fired, with which I got two, the birds flew across a lake and I lost track of them, though I spent four or five hours looking for some more. I believe that these birds breed in the neighborhood of Wainwright and hope that at some close future date some one will bear out my statement.