Species II. RECURVIROSTRA HIMANTOPUS* 



LONG-LEGGED AVOSET. 



[Plate LVIII. Fig. 2.] 



Long-legged Plover, Arct. Zool. p. 487, No. 405. — Turton, p. 416. Bewick, ii., 

 •IX.—V Echasse, Buff, viii., 114. PI. Enl. 878. 



Naturalists have most unaccountably classed this bird with the 

 genus Charadrius, or Plover, and yet affect to make the particular con- 

 formation of the bill, legs and feet, the rule of their arrangement. In 

 the present subject, however, excepting the trivial circumstance of the 

 want of a hind toe, there is no resemblance whatever of those, parts to 

 the bill, legs or feet, of the Plover ; on the contrary, they are so entirely 

 different, as to create no small surprise at the adoption, and general 

 acceptation, of a classification, evidently so absurd and unnatural. 

 This appears the more reprehensible, when we consider the striking 

 affinity there is between this bird and the common Avoset, not only in 

 the particular form of the bill, nostrils, tongue, legs, feet, wings and- 

 tail, but extending to the voice, manners, food, place of breeding, form 

 of the nest, and even the very color of the eggs of both, all of which 

 are strikingly alike, and point out, at once, to the actual observer of 

 nature, the true relationship of these remarkable birds. 



Strongly impressed with these facts, from an intimate acquaintance 

 with the living subjects, in their native wilds, I have presumed to 

 remove the present species to the true and proper place assigned it by 

 nature ; and shall now proceed to detail some particulars of its history. 



This species arrives on the seacoast of New Jersey about the twenty- 

 fifth of April, in small detached flocks, of twenty or thirty together. 

 These sometimes again subdivide into lesser parties ; but it rarely hap- 

 pens that a pair is found solitary, as during the breeding season they 

 usually associate in small companies. On their first arrival, and indeed 

 during the whole of their residence, they inhabit those particular parts 

 of the salt marshes pretty high up towards the land, that are broken 

 into numerous shallow pools, but are not usually overflowed by the tides 

 during the summer. These pools, or ponds are generally so shallow, 

 that with their long legs the Avosets can easily wade them in every 

 direction, and as they abound with minute shell-fish, and multitudes of 



* This bird belongs to the genus Himantopus of Brisson. 



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