338 YELLOW-SHANKS SNIPE. 



secondaries edged, and all the coverts edged and tipped, with white ; 

 shafts black ; eye also black ; legs and naked thighs long and yellow ; 

 outer toe united to the middle one by a slight membrane ; claws a horn 

 color. The female can scarcely be distinguished from the male. 



Note. — Mr. Ord in his reprint gives the following more minute 

 description, of a female, shot on the twenty-second of April : " length 

 upwards of ten inches, breadth twenty inches ; irides brown ; bill 

 slender, straight, an inch and a half in length, and black, mandibles 

 of equal length, the upper bent downwards at the tip ; throat, lower 

 parts, thighs, and under tail coverts, white — the last are generally 

 marked on their exterior vanes with brown ; those next to the tail 

 barred with the same ; lower part of the neck, with the breast, gray, 

 the feathers streaked down their centres with dusky ; head and back 

 part of the neck black, the plumage edged with gray, in some specimens 

 edged with brown ash, upper parts black, with oblong spots of white, 

 intermixed with pale brown feathers ; rump brown, edged with white ; 

 upper tail coverts white, barred with brown ; the tail is composed of 

 twelve feathers, white, barred with ashy brown, the upper feathers, in 

 some, gray brown, marked on their vanes, though not across, with brown 

 and white ; wings, when closed, extend somewhat beyond the tail ; 

 primaries and secondaries dusky ; shaft of first primary whitish above, 

 the rest of the shafts brown above, in some black, all white below ; 

 lesser wing coverts dusky, slightly edged with white, and in some spotted 

 with brown on the exterior vanes ; secondaries slightly edged with 

 white ; legs bare above the knees upwards of an inch ; length of tarsus 

 two inches ; outer toe connected as far as the first joint to the middle 

 one, the membrane of the inner toe quite small ; legs and feet yellow 

 ochre ; the claw of the middle toe has the appearance of having a sup- 

 plemental nail at its base. A young male shot at the same time, had 

 its upper parts mixed with cinereous." 



