SEED-SNIPE 191 
SEED-SNIPE 
Thinocorus rumicivorus 
Above buffy brown, marbled and irregularly banded with black ; 
wing-feathers black, edged with white, external secondaries like the 
back; tail black, broadly tipped with white, central rectrices like the 
back ; beneath white; a broad line on each side of the throat uniting 
in the centre of the neck and expanding into a collar on the breast, 
black; sides of neck greyish; bill dark brown, feet yellow; length 
6.5, wing 3.9 inches. Female similar but with only slight traces of 
black bar. 
THIS curious bird has the grey upper plumage and 
narrow, long, sharply-pointed wings of a Snipe, with 
the plump body and short, strong, curved beak of a 
Partridge. But the gallinaceous beak is not in this 
species correlated, as in the Partridges, with stout 
rasorial feet ; on the contrary, the legs and feet are 
extremely small and feeble, and scarcely able to 
sustain the weight of the body. When alighting the 
Seed-Snipe drops its body directly upon the ground 
and sits close like a Goatsucker; when rising it 
rushes suddenly away with the wild, hurried flight 
and sharp, scraping alarm-cry of a Snipe. It is ex- 
clusively a vegetable feeder. I have opened the 
gizzards of many scores to satisfy myself that they 
never eat insects, and have found nothing in them 
but seed (usually clover-seed) and tender buds and 
leaves mixed with minute particles of gravel. 
These birds inhabit Patagonia, migrating north 
to the pampas in winter, where they arrive in April. 
