MISCEL LA NEO US NO TES. 427 



No. XVI— THE COLORATION OF THE WING-LINING AND AXIL- 



LARIES IN THE FANTAIL AND PINTAIL SNIPES. 



(With a Plate.) 



Two specimens of GaUinago ccdestls, lately obtained here, represent such 

 very opposite extremes in the amount of grey barring on the wing-lining 

 and axillaries that they are perhaps worth noticing, 



Mr. Blanford says of G. ccelestis ( " Birds," Vol. IV., p. 287) : " Underwing 

 coverts and axillaries barred with brown, but never evenly. The median 

 secondary lower coverts are never barred, and the white on the axillaries in 

 Indian birds always exceeds the brown in amount." Of G. stenura he says 

 (p. 289) that it can be distinguished " (2) by the wing coverts and axillaries 

 being regularly and evenly barred throughout with blackish-brown and 

 white, the bars of the two colours about equally broad," 



Legge ("'Birds of Ceylon," p. 822) says G. ccelestis differs from G. stenura "in 

 having the axillaries barred with paler, narrower, and much more distant 

 bars ; in having the under wing coverts along the edge of the wing much less 

 barred, and the greater secondary series more on less uniform white, the 

 brown bars being chietly confined to the base." 



Of young birds he sajs: " The axillaries are more barred, approaching those 

 of the 'Pintail' in character, but the white interspaces are broader than the 

 dark bars, and the reverse is the case in the last named species." (Not invari- 

 ably.— A. L. B.) 



No doubt the above distinctions almost always hold good, but one of my 

 specimens of G. ccelestis shows that the " never" once or twice used above 

 might be modified into ' well, hardly ever ' ! 



The darker of my two birds, shot here a week ago by Dr. Lucy of Kuala 

 Lumpur, who kindly sent it to me for the Museum, has the small under 

 coverts along the edge of the wing very heavily barred with blackish-grey 

 the black much exceeding the white, and being also darker than in the three 

 or four G. stenura with which I have compared the bird j the greater second- 

 ary coverts are gray for about two-thirds of their length, then have a gray 

 bar much broader than the white interspace, and a broad white tip. The 

 median secondary lower coverts, though conspicuously whiter than any 

 other feathers in the wing, are all barred, most of them with a blackish 

 blotch at the base and two long slanting bars on the outer web. The longer 

 tertiary wing coverts have the gray far exceeding the white, and the 

 bars on the axillaries are practically of the same breadth as the inter- 

 spaces J some being slightly narrower and some slightly broader ; the 

 feathers on the whole being quite as heavily marked as in an average 

 G. stenura. 



The coloration of the axillaries in these species has always seemed to me 

 the most easily seen distinction, and my usual plan when looking for 'Tantails" 

 in a bag of snipe is to lift the birds by the tip of the wing and just glance 



