Slender-billed Plover.
(Seebohm’s ‘Plovers,’ p. 111.)
Hab. Southern half of South America.
This pretty and curious Plover, with a Snipe-like beak, inhabits South Patagonia and the Falklands. In the autumn it migrates north, and during the cold season is found sparsely distributed throughout the Argentine States, and passes into Bolivia and Peru. On the pampas it is most abundant in April, but most of the birds seen during that month are travellers to warmer latitudes.
It is a shy and exceedingly active bird, somewhat larger than the Golden Plover in size, and in the Plata district is usually called Chorlo canela, from the prevailing cinnamon-red tint of the plumage. It is distinguished in the family it belongs to by the great length of its straight slender probe-like bill, unlike that of any other Plover; and it also has other structural peculiarities, the toes being exceptionally short and thick, the frontal bone curiously modified, and the eyes enormously large, like those of a nocturnal species. I do not think, however, that it migrates by night, as I have never heard its peculiar passage-cry after dark. A flock is usually composed of from a dozen to thirty individuals, and when on the ground they scatter widely, running more rapidly than any other Plover I am acquainted with. When they travel the flight is swift and high, the birds much scattered. They possess no mellow or ringing tones like other members of the Plover family; on the ground they are silent, but when taking wing invariably utter a long tremulous reedy note, with a falling inflection, and usually repeated three or four times. The sound may be imitated by striking on the slackened strings of a guitar. This cry is frequently uttered while the birds are migrating.
On the Rio Negro in Patagonia I observed this Plover only in the winter season; but Durnford found it nesting in the valley of the Sengel in Chupat in the month of December.
[392.] HÆMATOPUS PALLIATUS, Temm.
(AMERICAN OYSTER-CATCHER.)
Hæmatopus palliatus, Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 143; Durnford, Ibis, 1878, p. 403 (Centr. Patagonia); Seebohm, Plovers, p. 305; Baird, Brew., et Ridgw. Water-B. N. A. i. p. 112.
Description.—Head and neck all round black; back and wing-coverts brown; upper tail-coverts, greater wing-coverts, and abdomen white; bill and feet orange: whole length 17·0 inches, wing 9·5, tail 3·5. Female similar.
Hab. America.