SEED-SNIPE 191 



SEED-SNIPE 



Thinocorus rumidvorus 



Above buffy brown, marbled and irregularly banded with black ; 

 wing-feathers black, edged with white, external secondaries like the 

 back ; tail black, broadly tipped with white, central rectrices like the 

 back ; beneath white ; a broad line on each side of the throat uniting 

 in the centre of the neck and expanding into a collar on the breast, 

 black ; sides of neck greyish ; bill dark brown, feet yellow ; length 

 6.5, wing 3.9 inches. Female similar but with only slight traces of 

 black bar. 



THIS curious bird has the grey upper plumage and 

 narrow, long, sharply-pointed wings of a Snipe, with 

 the plump body and short, strong, curved beak of a 

 Partridge. But the gallinaceous beak is not in this 

 species correlated, as in the Partridges, with stout 

 rasorial feet ; on the contrary, the legs and feet are 

 extremely small and feeble, and scarcely able to 

 sustain the weight of the body. When alighting the 

 Seed-Snipe drops its body directly upon the ground 

 and sits close like a Goatsucker ; when rising it 

 rushes suddenly away with the wild, hurried flight 

 and sharp, scraping alarm-cry of a Snipe. It is ex- 

 clusively a vegetable feeder. I have opened the 

 gizzards of many scores to satisfy myself that they 

 never eat insects, and have found nothing in them 

 but seed (usually clover-seed) and tender buds and 

 leaves mixed with minute particles of gravel. 



These birds inhabit Patagonia, migrating north 

 to the pampas in winter, where they arrive in April. 



