SNIPE-BILLED GODWIT 99 



together when feeding, they did not go off in one big flock, 

 but split up into smaller parties and each took its own line, 

 fl5Mng less swiftly than the black-tailed species, though rising 

 quicker. They were so wary that he only got six specimens, 

 though as many as a hundred birds might be seen on one 

 bank at a time, and they were even more silent than the 

 other kind, very occasionally uttering their low pipe; their food 

 had consisted of small sea animals, and they themselves had the 

 peculiar flavour which Hume calls " froggy," reminding him 

 of eels from mudd)^ water ; this is curious, as even when near 

 the sea the black-tailed godwit retains its excellent flavour. 

 Like that bird, the bar-tailed godwit puts on a chestnut 

 plumage in the breeding-season, though retaining its charac- 

 teristic differences, and it also breeds all along the Northern 

 Hemisphere. In winter a race of it even reaches New Zealand 

 and is a favourite object of sport with gunners under its Maori 

 name of Kual'a, or the very misleading English one of " curlew." 



Snipe-billed God^vit. 



* Macrorhamphus semipalmatus. 



This very rare bird has exactly the bill of the most typical 

 snipes, overshot, broader at the tip than the middle, and so soft 

 and full of nerve-endings at the tip that it becomes pitted when 

 drying after death ; it can be distinguished from all true snipe 

 and their painted imitator, however, by having the toes webbed 

 at the base, whereas the toes of snipe are free to the very 

 root. 



In this basal webbing of the toes the snipe-billed godwit 

 shows its relationship to the godwits proper, although in these 

 the web is less developed, and its plumage is also a godwit's, not 

 a snipe's, being in winter variegated with drab and whitish, 

 without the rich dark tints and creamy head- and back-stripes 

 so usual in snipe, and in summer a bricky red with dark markings 

 on the back. It is nearly of the size of small male specimens of 

 the bar-tailed godwit, being rather over a foot long, and it 



* Pseudoscolopax on ^\a.te. 



