EskimoCurlew_FlyingwithGoldenPlovers_Emanuel_Victor_BolivarTX_11April2020_Reel4004.wav
Victor Emanuel [00:00:00] A few days after I saw the Eskimo curlew with George Williams, I had the idea of taking Ernest P. Edwards, "Buck" Edwards, who was the assistant curator of the Houston Museum of Natural History, down to see the curlew. We had become friends.
Victor Emanuel [00:00:17] So we went down to Galveston and we looked in the field where I had first seen the curlew and it wasn't there. We looked, we went further down the Island, to Galveston County State Park, where Ben had first found the curlew. It wasn't there.
Victor Emanuel [00:00:30] So we were going to go back to Houston, and I said to Buck, "Why don't we check the other field where I first saw it one more time?" So we went back to that field, which is about on 8-Mile Road and Stewart Road. And it wasn't there.
Victor Emanuel [00:00:42] But we were about to go back to Houston, and, from the south, flying along the dune line (they're not very big dunes, but the small dunes on Galveston) was a little flock of birds. And then immediately I could see in my binoculars they were golden plover, about six of them.
Victor Emanuel [00:01:00] And in with them was a curlew. Immediately, I knew it was going to be the Eskimo curlew because the Eskimo curlew migrated with the golden plover from Canada to Argentina. They both had the same migration route. They were both fast fliers who would often be in the same flock.
Victor Emanuel [00:01:20] The flock coming toward us got closer and closer, and they alit in the field where I'd seen it. And so Buck got to see the Eskimo curlew. And we saw something, that is, an Eskimo curlew flying with a golden plover, that probably no one had seen in many, many, many years.