Part 9

The breeding range above outlined has become greatly restricted, and while it is still reported as breeding in Nova Scotia, it is of rare occurrence at this season on the coasts of the Northern and Middle Atlantic States. Willets have been reported as nesting on Barbuda, West Indies, but the record is probably based upon non-breeding individuals which also have been noted in Cuba (Guantanamo).

Winter range.--The winter range extends north to Texas (Brownsville); Louisiana (State Game Preserve and Breton Island); Alabama (Coffee Island); and probably rarely Virginia (Cobb Island). East to rarely Virginia (Cobb Island); rarely North Carolina (Fort Macon); South Carolina (Waverly Mills and Frogmore); Georgia (Savannah and Darien); Florida (Fernandina, Mosquito Inlet, Indian River, Sebastian, and Royal Palm Hammock); the Bahama Islands (Grassy Creek and Caicos); Cuba; probably Haiti; Porto Rico (Boqueron and Anegada Island); the Lesser Antilles (Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, and Trinidad); British Guiana; and Brazil (Catejuba Island). South to Brazil (Catejuba Island and Guapore River). West to Brazil (Guapore River); northeastern Colombia (Cartagena); probably Panama (Rio Juan Diaz); Yucatan (Merida and Cozumel Island); Tamaulipas (Matamoros); and Texas (Brownsville).

Spring migration.--Early dates of spring arrival are: New Jersey, Cape May, March 22, Long Beach, April 6, and Caldwell, April 7; Rhode Island, Rock Island, April 27; Massachusetts, Nantucket, May 2, Dennis, May 5, and Falmouth, May 11; and Nova Scotia, Yarmouth, April 22, and Wolfville, April 29.

Late dates of spring departure are: Mexico, Tampico, April 11; and Cuba, Trinidad, April 14, Siguanea, May 2, and Guantanamo, May 8.

Fall migration.--Information is lacking of the early arrival of the willet on the southern part of its winter range, but among late dates of fall departure are: Maine, Sagadahoc County, October 25; Massachusetts, Plymouth, October 4; Connecticut, Meriden, October 15; New Jersey, Salem County, October 8, and Caldwell, October 17; and Maryland, near Baltimore, about November 1.

Casual records.--The willet has been taken once in Kansas (near Hamilton, September 8, 1912); and one was obtained in Bermuda on July 3, 1848. It also has been reported on a few occasions from Europe, in all cases without complete data: France (Abbeville, also two in the Paris market); Dalmatia; and Sweden.

Egg dates.--Nova Scotia: 4 records, June 5 to 19. Virginia: 26 records, May 19 to June 16; 13 records, May 27 to June 8. South Carolina and Georgia: 53 records, March 10 to July 4; 27 records, May 9 to 22. Texas: 28 records, April 3 to June 10; 14 records, April 23 to May 24.

CATOPTROPHORUS SEMIPALMATUS INORNATUS (Brewster)

WESTERN WILLET

HABITS

When William Brewster (1887) described and named the western willet he characterized it as:

Differing from S. semipalmata in being larger, with a longer, slenderer bill; the dark markings above fewer, finer, and fainter, on a much paler (grayish-drab ground); those beneath duller, more confused or broken, and bordered by pinkish salmon, which often spreads over or suffuses the entire underparts, excepting the abdomen. Middle tail feathers either quite immaculate or very faintly barred.

It is a bird of the western interior; its main breeding grounds are in the Great Plains regions of the Northern States, west of the Mississippi River, and the central Provinces of Canada. Nearly all recent writers have recorded it as breeding on the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, an oft-repeated error. All the breeding birds that I have shot on the coasts of these two States, in May and June, were clearly referable to the eastern form. And I have been unable to find any specimens of inornata in collections that could be classed as breeding birds from these States. If the western willet breeds in Texas at all it must be on the plains or prairies of the interior. But it seems hardly likely that it would have a breeding range so widely separated from the northern range as outlined below. The eastern willet is strictly a coastwise bird and breeds, or did formerly, all along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. On the other hand, the western willet is just as strictly a bird of the inland prairies and plains during the breeding season.

Spring.--The main migration route seems to be northward through the Mississippi Valley, chiefly in April; most of the birds are on their breeding grounds by the first of May or earlier and are laying eggs before the end of that month. Birds which winter in South Carolina and Florida probably join this route by an overland flight. There is a northward migration through the interior valleys of California to breeding grounds west of the Rocky Mountains, and probably some birds cross these mountains to the interior plains.

Nesting.--We found western willets very common about the lakes in the prairie regions of North Dakota and Saskatchewan; but owing to their habit of flying a long distance to meet the intruder and making a great fuss everywhere but near their nests, we succeeded in finding only one nest. This was on the higher portion of the open prairie, a long way from any water, near Big Stick Lake, Saskatchewan. The nest was a hollow in the ground, measuring 7 by 6 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep, lined with grasses and dry weeds. It was in plain sight in short grass; a few scattered dead weeds were standing around it, but no long grass. It contained three fresh eggs on June 14, 1906. Ernest T. Seton (Thompson, 1890) found a nest in Manitoba “which was placed in a slight hollow, shaded on one side by the skull of a buffalo and on the other by a tuft of grass,” on an alkali plain.

The western willet breeds commonly in Boxelder County, Utah. Three sets of eggs in my collection, taken there on May 7, 13, and 16, 1916, by the Treganzas, came from nests described as slight depressions in short marsh grass; one was near an alkali flat, one near a water runway, and one on a partially grass-grown dike.

This bird is a rare, or very local, breeder in California. J. Van Denburgh (1919) reports five nests found on “a partially flooded mountain meadow” in Lassen County on June 1 and 6, 1918. “The nests were made of pieces of weeds rather carelessly built up on the mud. Some were found where the water was a few inches deep and some where the mud was drying.”

Eggs.--The eggs of the western willet are indistinguishable from those of the eastern bird. There is a slight average difference in length, but the measurements widely overlap. The measurements of 56 eggs average 54.1 by 37.6 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =58.1= by 39.4, =50.5= by =39.7=, and 54.9 by =35= millimeters.

Plumages.--The sequence of plumages and molts is the same for both races, but juvenal western birds are somewhat paler than eastern birds, and they have less barring on the tail feathers or none at all.

Fall.--From its breeding grounds in the interior the western willet migrates in three main directions to the seacoasts, almost due east to the Atlantic coast of New York and New England, southeast and south to the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts and southwest to the California coast. Probably the birds which breed east of the Rocky Mountains take the easterly and southerly routes and those which breed west of these mountains migrate to California. Most of the willets which we get in Massachusetts in August are immature western willets; I have never seen an adult. These young birds apparently come from the Great Lakes region, where they have been recorded in Illinois and Ohio and as far north as Toronto, Ontario. John T. Nichols says in his notes:

Along the bays and marshes of the south shore of Long Island the willet is a regular late-summer migrant in small numbers varying from year to year. Southbound shore birds of other species are now following this coast to the westward, but a large majority of the willet are moving in the opposite direction; that is, from west to east. Its maximum flight seems to come in the beginning of August, and a peak of abundance for the species was reached in 1923. At Mastic on August 4, 1923, 14 willet were counted passing west to east in 3 flocks during 2½ hours’ observation.

I have examined a number of specimens of these Long Island fall-migration willet, which have all been in the grey unmarked plumage of birds of the year (which I would not undertake to distinguish from adult fresh winter plumage), and remarkably uniform in size. Their bills varied scarcely at all in dimensions (slightly over 2¼ inches), being decidedly too long for the short-billed Virginia breeding bird, but much too short for the long-billed bird from the Dakotas (unless its young of the year are uniformly short-billed).

Winter.--Western willets mingle in winter with their eastern relatives on the South Atlantic and Gulf coast from Florida to Texas; they are especially abundant in Texas. They also winter abundantly from the coast of California southward. Bradford Torrey (1913) saw them, mixed with marbled godwits, near San Diego, in such numbers that he--

mistook them at first for a border of some kind of herbiage. Thousands there must have been; and when they rose at my approach they made something like a cloud; gray birds and brown birds so contrasted in color as to be discriminated beyond risk of error, even when too far away for the staring white wing patches of the willets to be longer discernible.

Mrs. Florence M. Bailey (1916) has well described their habits, as beach birds at this season, as follows:

In the flocks of brown godwits the few gray willets looked small. They fed in the same way as the godwits, though their bills were shorter and they could not probe so deep, but they ran their bills ahead of them through the wet sand, probed as far as they could reach, and then trotted back before the oncoming waves. A thoughtless one sat down just at the edge of the water line one day, its back toning in with the sand, its long legs stretched out before it; but soon after it was comfortably settled up came the foam and it had to bend forward on its tarsus, raise itself, and flee up the beach. I often saw one resting, standing on one leg, or sitting at ease with white rump showing. When stretching the black of the wings showed effectively as it does both when the birds fly up and when they alight with wings raised over the back. Willet, willet, they often called as they went.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.--United States and southern Canada (casually Alaska), south to northern South America.