SPOTTED REDSHANK. 203 
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the names “ spi,” 
*spou,” “spot,” and “spove,” are respectively applied 
either to this bird or the curlew, whilst the curlew 
is specially and repeatedly named in the L’Estrange 
accounts. 
TOTANUS FUSCUS (Linneus). 
SPOTTED REDSHANK. 
Although not specified in our earlier local records, 
the Spotted Redshank, no doubt, visited our coast in 
former times as frequently as, and probably more nume- 
rously than, it does now, but its identification, owing to 
great differences in plumage (a matter of age as well as 
of seasonal change), was evidently an ornithological 
riddle not easily solved, and hence the numerous 
synonyms,* attached by authors to this one species. By 
Messrs. Gurney and Fisher it was accurately described 
in 1846 as “not uncommon about the end of summer 
and early in autumn, the specimens so occurring 
being generally young birds; but their remark that 
it is only “ occasionally obtained at other periods of 
the year,” seems somewhat at variance with recent 
experience. This, however, merely indicates, what is 
observable in other migratory species, that, of late 
years, their stay is less prolonged on their southward 
passage, the main body passing over us altogether, and 
a few stragglers only marking their autumnal move- 
* Besides the name adopted by Yarrell this bird has been 
described as the dusky sandpiper, dusky snipe, black-headed 
snipe, spotted snipe, black redshank, Courland snipe, and Came 
bridge godwit. 
2D 2 
