OXYNOTUS— OYSTER-CATCHER 68i 



species, B. erythrorhyncha, with a wholly red instead of a yellow 

 bill Avas afterwards found in Abyssinia, and thought for some time 

 to be peculiar to the more northern part of Africa, but it is now 

 known to occur so far south as Natal, while the first has been 

 observed in Damaraland and the Transvaal. Very little more 

 seems to be known of the habits of either, and the systematic 

 position of the genus must be held uncertain. 



OXYNOTUS, the name of a genus of birds now ascertained 

 to be peculiar to two of the Mascarene Islands — Mauritius and 

 Reunion (Bourbon) — where the name of Cuisinier is applied to 

 them, and remarkable for the fact, nearly if not quite unique in 

 Ornithology,^ that, while the males of both species are almost 

 identical in appearance, the females are wholly unlike each other. 

 Though the habits of the Mauritian species, 0. rnfiventer, have been 

 very fairly observed, there seems to be nothing in them that might 

 account for the peculiarity. The genus Oxynotus is generally placed 

 in the group known as Campepliagidse, most or all of which are 

 distinguished from the Laniidm (to which they seem nearly 

 allied) by the feathers on the lower part of the back and on the 

 rump having the basal portion of the shaft very stiff and the distal 

 portion soft — a structure which makes that part of the body, on 

 being touched by the finger, feel as though it were beset with blunt 

 prickles. Hence the name of the genus conferred by Swainson, 

 and intended to signify "prickly back." The males, which look 

 rather like miniature Grey Shrikes (Lanhis excubiior and others), are 

 — except on close examination, when some slight differences of 

 build and shade become discernible — quite indistinguishable ; but 

 the female of the one species has a reddish -brown back, and is 

 bright ferruginous beneath, while the female of the other species is 

 dull white beneath, transversely barred, as are the females of some 

 Shrikes, Avith brown. Both sexes of each species, and the young of 

 one of them, are described and figured in The Ibis for 1866 (pp. 

 275-280, pis. vii. and viii.) 



OYSTER-CATCHER, a bird's name which does not seem to 

 occur in books until 1731, Avhen Catesby {Nat. Hist. Carolina, i. 

 p. 85) used it for a species which he observed to be abundant on 

 the oyster-banks left bare at low water in the rivers of Carolina, 

 and believed to feed principally upon those mollusks. In 1773 

 Pennant applied the name generically, though he and for nearly two 

 hundred years other British writers had called the allied British 

 species the " Sea-Pie." The change, in spite of the misnomer — for, 

 whatever may be the case elsewhere, in England the bird does not 



1 The only other instance cited by Darwin (Descent of 3fan, ii. pp. 192, 193) 

 is that of two species of Paradisea ; but therein the males differ from one another 

 to a far greater degree than do those of Oxynotus. 



