BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER. 197 



TRINGA PLATYRHYNCHA. 

 BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER. 



(PLATE 27.) 



^ringa platyrincha, Temm. Man.d'Orn. p. 398 (1815); et auctorum plurimorum 



Gray, Gould, Blyth, (Dresser), (Smtnders), &c. 

 Tringa eloroides, Vieill N. Diet. tfHist. Nat. xxxiv. p. 463 (1819). 

 Tringa platyrhyncha (Temm.), Meyer, Tascherib. Ztts. n. Ber. iii. p. 259 (1822). 

 Pelidna platyrhynclia (Temm.), Bonap. Comp. List B. Eur. 8f N. Amei: p. 50 (1838). 

 Limicola platyrhyncha (Temm.), Gray, List Birds Brit. Mus. iii. p. 107 (1844). 

 Limicola hartlaubi, Verr. Vinson's Voy. Madag., Ann. B,p. 5(1865). 

 *Limicola sibirica, Dresser, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1876, p. 674. 

 Limicola pygmaea (Lath.), apud (Bedisteiri), Koch, Naumann, Keyserling 8f Blasius, 



Savi, Schkgel, &c. 



It is rather singular that a bird breeding on the fells of Scandinavia 

 should so rarely find its way, on its annual migrations, to the British Islands. 

 There can be little doubt that it is often overlooked, and that the half- 

 dozen specimens which have been recorded do not fairly represent the 

 frequency of its visits. The Broad-billed Sandpiper was first made known 

 as a British bird in 1836, by Mr. Hoy, who stated that an example was 

 shot on the mud-flats at Breydon, in Norfolk, on the 25th of May of that 

 year (Hoy, Mag. Nat. Hist. x. p. 116). Since that date two other 

 examples have been obtained in the same locality one, now in Mr. J. H. 

 Gurney's collection, obtained about the end of May 1856 (Gurney, 

 ' Zoologist/ 1856, p. 5159), and the other on the 23rd of April, 1868 

 (Stevenson, ' Birds of Norfolk/ ii. p. 361). A fourth specimen of this 

 Sandpiper was obtained at Shoreham, in Sussex, in October 1845 (Borrer, 

 'Zoologist/ 1845, p. 1394); whilst a fifth was shot, in April 1863, at 

 Hornsea Mere in Yorkshire (Cordeaux, ' Birds of the Humber/ p. 135) . A 

 sixth British example was captured in Belfast Bay on the 4th of October, 

 1844 (Thompson, Ann. Nat. Hist. xv. p. 309). 



The Broad-billed Sandpiper is a very local bird during the breeding- 

 season, but its range extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Wolley 

 found it breeding near Muonioniska in lat. 68; and on the Scandinavian 



* Gates, in his ' Birds of British Burmah,' recognizes the validity of Dresser's species, 

 and Legge, in his ' Birds of Ceylon,' regards it as an eastern form of the European species ; 

 but Saunders, in his continuation of Newton's edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds,' has very 

 justly pointed out that the differences are not those of geographical distribution, but 

 merely of age, Dresser's alleged eastern species being the young after its first spring 

 moult, a plumage which, together with that of the bird of the year, he persistently ignores 

 in describing most of the Waders treated of in his ' Birds of Europe.' 



