2264 PLOVERS, SANDPIPERS, SNIPE, JACANAS, GULLS 



white with obscure brown markings. Breeding locally on the Arctic tundras of 

 Europe and Western Asia, the ordinary form is replaced by a variety eastward of the 

 Yenisei; while in North America it is represented by the American bar-tailed god- 

 wit (L.fedoa), in which the axillaries and under wing coverts are chestnut. Rarer 

 in Britain than the bar-tailed species, the black-tailed godwit (L. melanura} may be 

 recognized by the tail feathers being black with white bases, and by the white ax- 

 illaries. This Old- World form is represented in Eastern Asia by a variety, while in 

 the New World its place is taken by the American black-tailed godwit (L. hudson- 

 ica) , distinguished by its dark brown axillaries and under wing coverts. All the 

 godwits migrate far south in winter, the two Old -World kinds then reaching Africa 



COMMON TURNSTONE. 



and India, and their eastern varieties visiting Australia. Although frequently 

 breeding far inland, the godwits are essentially shore birds in winter, and to suit 

 them for such a habitat acquire in autumn a mud-colored livery. 



The four species of the genus Ereunetes form a kind of connecting 



Smpe-Beake j.^ between the preceding and the snipe, having the frontal feathers 

 Sandpipers 



arranged as in the former, but the extremity of the beak soft, ex- 

 panded, and rugose, as in the latter. The best-known species is the red-breasted 

 sandpiper (or snipe, as it is generally called), which breeds in Arctic America, where 

 it is represented by two varieties, and migrates in winter as far as Brazil and Chili, 

 occasionally struggling to Western Europe. In Siberia it is replaced by Tacza- 

 nowsky's sandpiper (E. taczanowskii) . 



