Hab. Arctic America, descending south to Buenos Ayres in winter.
This species is also an annual visitor to the pampas from the Arctic regions where it breeds. It begins to arrive, usually in small bodies, early in the month of October; and during the summer is seldom met with in flocks of any size on the pampas, but is usually seen on the dry open ground associating in small numbers with the Golden Plover, the Whimbrel, and other northern species. I, however, think it probable that it travels further south than its fellow-migrants from North America, and has its principal feeding-grounds somewhere in the interior of Patagonia; also that its northern journey takes place later than that of other species. In some seasons I have observed these birds in April and May, in flocks of two to five hundred, travelling north, the birds flying very low, flock succeeding flock at intervals of about fifteen minutes, and continuing to pass for several days.
[408.] LIMOSA HÆMASTICA (Linn.).
(HUDSONIAN GODWIT.)
Limosa hudsonica, Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 146; Durnford, Ibis, 1877, p. 43 (Chupat) et p. 200 (Buenos Ayres); White, P. Z. S. 1883, p. 42 (Buenos Ayres); Seebohm, Plovers, p. 392. Limosa hæmastica, Baird, Brew., et Ridgw. Water-B. N. A. i. p. 260.
Description.—(In summer.) Above dark brownish black, mixed on the head with longitudinal streaks of whitish, on the neck with pale chestnut, and with many of the feathers of the back spotted or edged with pale chestnut; wings and tail blackish, the upper half of the inner webs of the primaries and secondaries, the basal part of the outer rectrices, and a broad band across the upper tail-coverts pure white: beneath, cheeks and throat whitish, becoming pale chestnut on the neck, longitudinally striped with blackish; rest of under surface deeper chestnut, transversely barred with blackish. (In winter.) Above uniform dull brownish; head, neck, and under surface dirty white or pale buff: whole length 14·3 inches, wing 8·5, tail 3·7.
Hab. Arctic America, descending south to Central Patagonia in winter.
The Hudsonian Godwit, Mr. Seebohm tells us, “breeds on the tundras of North America north of the forest-growth, from Alaska to Baffin’s Bay, but is rare at the western extremity of its range.” In winter it goes far south, like most of the other Grallæ.
Durnford found it “common from April to September about the lagoons and arroyos to the south of Buenos Ayres;” and states that in habits it much resembles the Bar-tailed Godwit of Europe (Limosa lapponica). He also met with it in Chupat, and obtained two specimens there on the 13th of November, 1876.
I have met with it in flocks during the summer of the Southern Hemisphere, and these birds, as well as those obtained at Chupat in November by Durnford, were undoubtedly visitors from the north; but invariably small flocks of half a dozen to thirty birds begin to appear on the pampas in April, and remain there, as Durnford says, until September, when the northern migrants are nearly due. These individuals must therefore breed near the extremity, or beyond the extremity, of South America. It is very curious, to say the least of it, that the Arctic and Antarctic regions of America should possess the same species, and that, at opposite seasons of the year, it should winter in the same district, so far from the breeding-place of one set of individuals, and so near to that of the other! Captain Abbott observed the Hudsonian Godwit in the Falkland Islands in flocks in the month of May (see Ibis, 1861, p. 156). These could not have been Alaskan birds, but were no doubt southern breeders on their way north, for that they could winter so far south seems incredible.