Part 38

Egg dates.--Iceland: May 21 to June 1 (5 dates); June 2 to 29 (18 dates). North Norway, June 10 to 20 (5 dates). North Russia and Siberia, June 10 to July 1 (10 dates). Most eggs of the southern race are laid in the British Isles from May 10 onward, but exceptionally eggs have been met with from April 16 to the end of that month, and in Friesland eggs have been taken on April 19.

PLUVIALIS DOMINICA DOMINICA (Müller)

AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER

HABITS

The golden plover is not only one of our most beautiful shore birds in its brilliant spring plumage, but its wonderful migration excites our admiration and the comparison of its former abundance with its present scarcity furnishes a striking picture of the ruthless slaughter that has squandered our previous wealth of wild life. A few quotations will serve to illustrate the enormous flights of golden plover that swarmed over both American continents during the past century. Robert B. Roosevelt (1884) thus refers to a flock he saw near Montauk Point, Long Island, many years ago:

A gentle hollow spreads before us for several acres literally covered with the ranks of the much-desired, the matchless golden plover. As they stand in serried legions, the white mark on their heads gives a strange checkered weirdness to the phalanx; and we involuntarily pause, spellbound by the novelty of the spectacle. Our host himself, though an old hand, owns that he has never before gazed on such a sight. There they stand, with heads erect and bodies motionless, just out of gunshot. Their number is computed by our companion to be not less than 3,000, closely packed, and apparently awaiting our onset. Warily crawling to within 70 yards, we halt as we see unmistakable evidences of uneasiness and suspicion among the crowded ranks. They stoop, they run, they rise with “a sounding roar,” to which the united report of our four barrels savagely responds. Away, away with headlong speed scatters and dissolves that multitudinous host, and we hasten to secure our spoils.

Writing of conditions in Argentina about the middle of the last century, W. H. Hudson (1922) writes:

The golden plover was then one of the abundant species. After its arrival in September, the plains in the neighborhood of my home were peopled with immense flocks of this bird. Sometimes in hot summers the streams and marshes would mostly dry up, and the aquatic-bird population, the plover included, would shift their quarters to other districts. During one of these droughty seasons, when my age was 9, there was a marshy ground 2 miles from my home where a few small pools of water still remained, and to this spot the golden plover would resort every day at noon. They would appear in flocks from all quarters, flying to it like starlings in England coming in to some great roosting center on a winter evening. I would then mount my pony and gallop off joyfully to witness the spectacle. Long before coming in sight of them the noise of their voices would be audible, growing louder as I drew near. Coming to the ground, I would pull up my horse and sit gazing with astonishment and delight at the spectacle of that immense multitude of birds, covering an area of 2 or 3 acres, looking less like a vast flock than a floor of birds, in color a rich deep brown, in strong contrast to the pale gray of the dried-up ground all round them. A living, moving floor and a sounding one as well, and the sound, too, was amazing. It was like the sea, but unlike it in character since it was not deep; it was more like the wind blowing, let us say, on thousands of tight-drawn wires of varying thicknesses, vibrating them to shrill sound, a mass and tangle of 10,000 sounds. But it is indescribable and unimaginable.

Edward H. Forbush (1912) tells of two men who killed plover enough to fill a tip car two-thirds full in one day, during a big storm on Nantucket in the forties. Again he speaks of a great flight which occurred there on August 29, 1863, “when golden plover and Eskimo curlew landed on the island in such numbers as to almost darken the sun. Between seven and eight thousand of these birds were killed on the island and on Tuckernuck.” He says that from 1860 on the species began to decrease, due to the demand created by the failing supply of passenger pigeons, and that in 1890 alone two Boston firms received from the West 40 barrels closely packed with curlew and plover, with 25 dozen curlew and 60 dozen plover to the barrel.

By the end of the last century this species had about reached its lowest ebb; it had become scarce where it once abounded; no more big flights occurred; and in many places it was rarely seen. But protective measures came in time to save it from extermination; the stopping of the sale of game and the removal of this species from the game-bird list were badly needed. Since the last move was made the species has shown some signs of recovery. Edwin Beaupre (1917) says that “after an absence of almost 15 years, the golden plover has apparently resumed its migratory visits to eastern Ontario.” Prof. William Rowan (1923) says:

This year has been an exceptional golden-plover year. At the place referred to above, somewhere over a thousand birds were seen on the 20th of May alone, in moving flocks varying in number from 30 individuals to several hundreds. This was evidently not unique; for about the same time I got a report from quite another part of the Province that this species was unusually abundant, while from yet another quarter I got a very good description of the bird in a letter with a request that I name it for the inquirer, a careful bird observer. Her comment was that she had never seen the species before, but that it was, at the time of writing, present on the plowed fields in enormous numbers.

And John T. Nichols tells me that “of recent years there has been a distinct increase” on Long Island. If shooting conditions in its winter home could be controlled, its future would be assured.

Spring.--From its winter home on the pampas of Argentina and Uruguay the golden plover starts early on its long northward migration. Dr. Alexander Wetmore (1926) noted that--

The northward migration began with a flock of nine seen January 23, 1921, at a little fresh-water pool on the beach near La Paloma, Uruguay; when flushed these passed on to the west. Single individuals were seen near San Vicente, Uruguay, in flight toward the northwest on January 24 and 30. At Lazcano, Uruguay, birds in passage north were seen in early morning on February 7 and 8, and one was recorded February 18 at Rio Negro, Uruguay. On March 8 at Guamini, Buenos Aires, 15 came in at dusk to roost on a little mud bar in company with Hudsonian godwits. The migration seemed almost at an end then, as later I saw only four at Tunuyan, Mendoza, on March 23; and on April 5 only a few were heard calling with other shore birds in flight northward over Tucuman, Tucuman.

The exact route followed through the interior of South America is not definitely known, but it is not known to migrate along either coast of that continent. Austin H. Clark (1905) has advanced the theory that it prefers to fly with a beam wind and that it selects the route over which the prevailing winds will produce this condition. He suggests the following as the probable route:

In returning the birds would first go north (across the prevailing westerlies) until in the vicinity of Buenos Aires and the country just to the west of it, where they would encounter northeasterly winds, which would turn them inland, up the valley of the La Plata and along the plains to the east of the Andes, the course gradually becoming more northerly, and then northeasterly in the area covered by the southeast trades. They would reach the Amazon Valley in its western half, and then under the guidance of the northeast trades fly northwest toward the Isthmus of Panama and Central America. The course from here would be northwest across the trades to Texas and the Mississippi Valley. The birds follow up this valley northward and then, on reaching Canada, fly northwest across the prevailing southwesterly and westerly winds to their breeding grounds in western Arctic America.

Another theory advanced by Prof. Wells W. Cooke (1912), into which the facts seem to fit equally well, is that--

Birds follow that route between the winter and summer homes that is the shortest and at the same time furnishes an abundant food supply. The plover seeks the shortest treeless route overland, and alighting on the coast of Texas travels leisurely over the Mississippi Valley prairies, which are abundantly supplied with food, to the plains of the Saskatchewan, and thence to the Arctic coast. Not until Texas is reached can the movements of the golden plover be definitely traced, and at no place between Peru and Texas has it ever been recorded as common. In fact, the records as they stand are what they should be if the plover escapes the forested regions of northern South America and Central America by a single flight of from 2,000 to 2,500 miles from the valleys of eastern Peru to the treeless prairies of Texas.

The golden plover is practically unknown west of the Rocky Mountains in the spring; it has always been a rare straggler on the Atlantic coast at this season; and even as far east as Ohio it rarely occurs. Its main route is through the prairie regions west of the Mississippi River. I have seen what was probably the last of the migration, during the first week of May, along the coastal prairies of Texas, and have watched the late spring flight in Saskatchewan during the last week in May; probably I missed the heaviest part of the flight in both cases. On May 26 to 28, 1917, while driving about Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, I had a good chance to observe a considerable flight of these beautiful birds, all apparently in full spring plumage. The flocks appeared from the southward during the early forenoon, flying swiftly in ever-changing formations, rising to a height of 30 or 40 feet and then sweeping low close to the ground. They all seemed to follow the same course over the burnt-over prairies and the freshly plowed and harrowed lands near the shore of the lake. Occasionally a flock would stop and scatter about to feed; their black bellies and golden-spangled backs were surprisingly inconspicuous on the black ground and among the yellow stubble. They were very shy and restless, constantly on the move, and if followed up too closely they were on the wing again and soon disappeared over the northern horizon. It was almost impossible to approach them on foot when they were on the ground, though a flock would occasionally fly by within gunshot. One that I shot on the ground was 75 paces away, measured distance. Some of the flocks were accompanied by a few buff-breasted sandpipers.

Professor Rowan (1926) says that in Alberta:

The arrival of this species at our lake is precipitate, for there may be none to-day and hundreds to-morrow. The flocks would appear to arrive by night, for they are there at daybreak, when one usually takes the first walk around. They are not birds of the shore line in the spring, but like the buff-breasted sandpiper, they seem nevertheless chiefly to frequent country adjacent to some large lake. This, together with their mode of arrival, in considerable flocks and evidently at night, suggests that they have traveled a considerable distance from their last stopping place. They stay with us some days and then go in the manner in which they came, en masse. We have no records earlier than May 8 when the birds may first be expected, but the main contingent arrives nearer the 16th or 17th, while by the 23d or 24th they have usually all gone. Their period with us is therefore brief as compared with the majority of shore birds.

The remainder of the journey is quickly completed, for, at Point Barrow, John Murdoch (1885) says:

They are among the earlier waders to arrive, as stragglers generally appear about the 20th to the 25th of May, before there is much bare ground. In 1882 a small party in full breeding plumage, and apparently all males, arrived May 21, but no more arrived until June 11. The tundra was at this time bare only along the edge of the beach, and the ice and snow was not yet gone from the lagoons. This party remained in nearly the same place for a couple of weeks, feeding on small red worms which they found in marshy spots, and all but two of them were taken, although they were very wild.

Along through the first and second week in June they continued to arrive in small parties, and from that time on are quite plenty scattered in pairs and threes all over the tundra. They are very wild and difficult to approach, and very noisy. In addition to their ordinary well-known call note, they have in the breeding season, a loud but very melodious cry of tud’ling! many times repeated, uttered as the bird flies along rather high, with long slow strokes of the wings.

Nesting.--Roderick MacFarlane was very successful in finding nests of golden plover in the Anderson River region and other parts of the Arctic barren grounds. He sent a large number of eggs to Washington and I find in his notes references to over 120 nests, on which some data were given, mostly very brief. He says that “golden plover were in great abundance in the barren grounds, as well as along the Arctic coast. They seldom or never nested in the wooded country, though a few specimens were found on the open plains or commons, which occur on the borders of that tract.” Some of the nests on the Arctic coast were “near the beach” or even “within a few yards of the sea water.” The nests were evidently mere hollows in the open tundra, lined with dead leaves; there were no attempts at concealment, but the protective coloring of the eggs made them very difficult to find. He says that “when a nest of this plover is approached the female invariably gets off it at a quick pace, between a run and a walk, which it continues at short intervals until the intruder be attracted to a distance therefrom, when it flies away. The male generally joins its mate in this.” On a few occasions, when surprised, the bird fluttered away for a short distance, but soon began to run as usual. Often the bird left the nest when the men were 100 yards away from it. Once when they had hunted in vain for an hour and a half, they retired and watched. “After a few minutes she came on at a cautious run, stopping frequently and making occasional excursions in different directions,” and finally settled on the eggs. They found that several of the party had repeatedly passed quite close to, and one had nearly trodden on the eggs. Watching the bird return to the nest, which she generally does within a few minutes, seems to be the best way of finding a nest.

Of the nests found near Point Barrow, Mr. Murdoch (1885) says:

The nest is exceedingly hard to find, although it is not concealed at all, but is simply a depression in the bare black clayey tundra lined with a little dry moss. The only vegetation on this part of the tundra is white and grayish moss, which harmonizes so extraordinarily with the peculiar blotching of the eggs that it is almost impossible to see them unless one knows exactly where to look. A favorite nesting site is on the high banks of the gullies or small streams. No nests were ever found in the grass or in swampy ground.

W. Sprague Brooks (1915) found only one nest near Demarcation Point, Alaska, of which he says: