LIMOSA HAEMASTICA (Linnaeus)
HUDSONIAN GODWIT
HABITS
I can count on the fingers of one hand the red-letter days when I have been privileged to see this rare and handsome wader. It has always been among the great desiderata of bird collectors. Its eggs are exceedingly rare in collections. Many ornithologists have never seen it in life. I can find no evidence that it was ever common. All the earlier writers reported it as uncommon or rare. Audubon (1840) referred to it as "of rare occurrence in any part of the United States." He never saw it in life and handled only a few market specimens in the flesh.
Spring.—From its winter home in far southern South America the Hudsonian godwit migrates in spring by some unknown route to the coast of Texas, where it arrives in April. I saw three adults and collected a pair in fine spring plumage near Aransas Pass on May 17, 1923. From Texas and Louisiana it migrates northward through the Mississippi Valley, central Canada and the Mackenzie Valley to the Arctic coast. Prof. William Rowan in his notes refers to it as a scarce, but regular, spring migrant in Alberta; his dates are between April 29 and May 29. He and C. G. Harrold (1923) recorded 24 birds between these dates in 1923. Their records are as follows:
April 29, 2 flocks of 6 each (also 2 avocets on this date, although on the 30th it snowed all day); May 7, 2 Hudsonians at the lake and one with a party of marbled godwits at a muddy slough a few miles away; May 8, a flock of 4 Hudsonian and 2 marbled; May 15, flock of 3 Hudsonian, 2 marbled, and 1 Willet; May 22, a fine male Hudsonian with 8 or 9 marbled. One other specimen was seen flying over about May 10.
At Whitewater Lake, in Manitoba, Mr. Harrold noted one each day on May 10 and 11, 1924, and 12 at the same place in 1925, practically all between May 13 and 20. I saw one at Lake Winnipegosis on June 5, 1913, a late date. On the Atlantic coast it is known only as a rare straggler in the spring and it is practically unknown on the Pacific coast.
Nesting.—Practically all of what little we know of the nesting habits of the Hudsonian godwit is contained in Roderick MacFarlane's notes. A female and four eggs were taken near Fort Anderson on June 9, 1862, from a nest on the ground made of a "few decayed leaves lying in a small hole scooped in the earth." Another nest on the Lower Anderson was "on the borders of a small lake" and was made of "a few withered leaves placed in a hole or depression in the ground."
A set of four eggs, in the Thayer collection, was collected by Bishop J. O. Stringer at Mackenzie Bay, June 30, 1897, from "a nest situated in a hollow in the grass." Edward Arnold also has a set of four eggs, taken by Bishop Stringer in the same locality on June 29, 1899; the nest was "in a tuft of grass on an island in Mackenzie Bay."
Eggs.—The Hudsonian godwit probably lays four eggs normally, though there are sets of three in collections. What few eggs I have seen, not over a baker's dozen, are ovate pyriform in shape and have little or no gloss. The ground colors vary from "dark olive buff" to "olive buff," or from "light brownish olive" to "ecrue olive." They are usually sparingly marked with rather obscure spots, irregularly distributed, but generally mostly around the larger end, in darker shades of similar colors, such as "buffy olive," "light brownish olive," "buffy brown," "bister," or "sepia." There are usually underlying spots of "hair brown" or shades of "drab," and some eggs have a few black dots at the larger end.