264 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



Family CHARADEIID^. Genus HETEROPYGIA. 



Subfamily SCOLOPACIN&. 



SIBERIAN PECTORAL SANDPIPER. 



HETEKOPYGIA ACUMINATA (Horsf.) 

 PLATE XXVIII. 



Totanus acuminatus, Horsfield, Trans. Linn. Soc. xiii. p. 192 (1820). 



Tringa acuminata (Horsf.), Ground, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1892, p. 581 ; Southwell, Zoolo- 

 gist, 1892, pp. 356, 405 ; Seebohm, Ibis, 1893, pp. 181185, pi. 5 ; Dixon, Nests 

 and Eggs Non-indig. Brit. B. Appendix i. p. 336 (1894) ; Seebohm, Col. Fig. Eggs 

 Brit. B. p. 146 (1896). 



Heteropygia acuminata (Horsf.) ; Sharpe, Handb. B. Gt. Brit. iii. p. 244 (1896) ; 

 Sharpe, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxiv. p. 566 (1896). 



Geographical distribution. British: The suggestion we made in the 

 first edition of the present work that possibly some of the examples of H. maculata 

 recorded as British might prove to belong to the present species, has been justified 

 by the discovery that at least one specimen has been so confused with the American 

 Pectoral Sandpiper. This example is said to have been obtained near Yarmouth, 

 in September, 1848, remaining for nearly half-a-century unidentified in the 

 Norwich museum. Curiously enough, with that strange coincidence of occurrence 

 remarkable in not a few of the rare birds obtained in our Islands, a second 

 example of this species was shot near the same locality on the 29th of August, 

 1892, by Mr. T. Ground. Both these examples are in adult plumage. They were 

 recorded by Seebohm (Ibis, 1893, p. 181, pi. 5), who gives (in conjunction with 

 Dr. Sclater) an exhaustive account of the species. Mr. Ground's specimen (the 

 example figured in the Ibis) when shot was in the company of several Dunlins and 

 a Kinged Plover. Foreign : Eastern Palaearctic region ; Oriental and Australian 

 regions in winter. Although the exact breeding grounds of this Sandpiper remain 

 to be discovered, there can be little doubt that they are located in North-eastern 

 Siberia, in Dauria, the Tchuski Land, and Kamtschatka. It is, however, worthy 

 of remark that Dr. Stejneger, during his visit to the latter country, only obtained 

 young examples during autumn migration on Behring Island. It passes the 

 coasts of China and Japan on migration, and winters in the Malay Archipelago, 

 and in the Australian portion of the Intertropical or Primogaean realm. It is a 

 species of wide abnormal migration, and has been met with in Alaska (where it 

 possibly breeds), at Gilgit, in the Indus Valley, in South Australia, the Friendly 

 Islands and New Zealand. 



