(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.