AVES CHARADRIIDvE 309 



from about the first week in January to the end of February ; and in Sep- 

 tember and October travelling south. Probably not fewer than a dozen 

 species of the plover order are breeders on the great austral continent ; 

 also other aquatic birds ducks and geese; and many Passerine birds, 

 chiefly of the Tyrant family." (Huds. Natur. La Plata, 1892, pp. 22-23.) 

 "And it is astonishing to find that, of the five and twenty species, at 

 least thirteen are visitors from North America, several of them having 

 their breeding places quite away in the Arctic regions. This is one of 

 those facts concerning the annual migration of birds which almost stagger 

 belief; for among them are species with widely different habits, upland, 

 marsh and seashore birds, and in their great biannual journey they pass 

 through a variety of climates, visiting many countries where the condi- 

 tions seem suited to their requirements. Nevertheless, in September, 

 and even as early as August, they begin to arrive on the pampas, the 

 golden plover often still wearing his black nuptial dress ; singly and in 

 pairs, in small flocks, and in clouds they come curlew, godwit, plover, 

 tatler, tringa piping the wild notes to which the Greenlander listened 

 in June, now to the gaucho herdsman on the green plains of La Plata, 

 then to the wild Indian in his remote village ; and soon, further south, to 

 the houseless huanaco-hunter in the grey wilderness of Patagonia." 

 (Huds. Natur. La Plata, 1892, pp. 20-21.) 



Genus TOTANUS Bechstein. 



Type. 



Totanus, Bechst. Orn. Taschenb. II. p. 282 (1803); Sharpe, 

 Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus. XXIV. p. 405 (1896); Sharpe, 

 H,and-list Bds. I. p. 160 (1899) T. calidris. 



Gambetta (nee Kock), Kaup, Nat. Syst. p. 54 (1829) . . T. calidris. 



Erythrocalis, Kaup, op. cit. p. 54 (1829) . . . T. calidris. 



sEgialodes, Heine, in Heine and Reichenow, Nomencl. 



Mus. Hein. p. 327 (1890) ...... T. calidris. 



Geographical Range. Almost cosmopolitan. 



TOTANUS MELANOLEUCUS (Gmelin). 



Stone Snipe, Penn. Arct. Zool. II. p. 468 (1785); Lath. Gen. Syn. III. 

 pt. I. p. 152(1785). 



