OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 129 



Family CHAKADEIID^. Genus 



Subfamily 



GREATER RINGED PLOVER. 



^GIALITIS MAJOE (Tristram). 



Charadrius hiaticula, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 253 (1766 partim.) ; Macgill. Brit. B. iv. 

 p. 116 (1850 partim). 



Charadrius major, Tristram, fide Gray, Hand-1. B. iii. p. 15 (1871); Seebohm, Hist. 

 Brit. B. iii. p. 20 (1885). 



/Egialitis hiaticula (Linn.), Dresser, B. Eur. p. 467, pi. 525 (1876 partim) ; Yarrell, 

 Brit. B. ed. 4, iii. p. 257 (1883 partim) ; Lilford, Col. Fig. Brit. B. pt. xx. (IQQlpartim). 



/Egialitis hiaticula major (Tristram), Dixon, Nests and Eggs Brit. B. p. 260 (1894) ; 

 Seebohm, Col. Fig. Eggs Brit. B. p. 121, pi. 40 (1896). 



/Egialitis hiaticola (Linn.), Sharpe, Handb. B. Gt. Brit. iii. p. 158 (1896 partim) ; 

 Sharpe, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxiv. p. 256 (1896 partim). 



Geographical distribution. British : The Greater Einged Plover is 

 widely distributed and resident throughout the British Islands, in many inland 

 districts as well as on the sandy portions of the coast. It extends to the Outer 

 Hebrides (but not to St. Kilda, as no part of the coast there is suited to its needs), 

 the Orkneys, Shetlands, and the Channel Islands. Foreign : The extra-British 

 range of this form of Einged Plover appears to be very restricted so far as can at 

 present be determined, the bird being confined to the adjoining coasts of France 

 and Holland. Further research may probably show it to be an inhabitant of all 

 the coasts of the North Sea. 



Allied forms. JEgialitis hiaticula, the small race, which will be treated 

 of in the following chapter. The Greater Einged Plover is, in its typical form, a 

 much more robust bird, and has the upper parts paler in colour. The wings on 

 an average are longer (5'5 to 5'0 inches instead of 5'2 to 4'8 inches). As may be 

 remarked from these figures, the two races completely intergrade. Mgialeus 

 semipalmatus, an inhabitant in summer of Arctic and Subarctic America, from 

 Greenland to Alaska, and the north-eastern coasts of Asia, and in winter of 

 tropical America. As this bird is found at least as far south as Patagonia, it may 

 prove another example of a species with an equatorial winter base migrating north 

 and south to breed in the temperate and polar regions of the Northern and 

 Southern hemispheres. Although the bird is generically distinct from both races 

 of the Einged Plover because of the web between the outer and middle toes 



extending to the second joint, its great resemblance in every other external 

 9 



