THE



139



Hvtcultural ®aga3ute,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCI ETY.



New Series —VOL. VI. — No. 5 .—All rights reserved. MARCH, 1908.



THE EGYPTIAN PLOVER.


Pluvianus egyptius.


ITS NAME, DISTRIBUTION, KNOWN AND REPUTED


HABITS.


By Capt. Stanley S. Flower.


The beautiful bird whose photograph by W. S. Berridge is

published in this number of the Avicultural Magazine was first

made known to science by the energetic young Swedish naturalist,

Frederick Hasselquist, who visited Egypt from May 1750 to

March 1751. Travelling in Egypt in those times was neither

easy or pleasant. Poor Hasselquist had the greatest difficulties

to contend with, he said it was like doing penance for crimes,

and on his return journey, after along illness, he died at Smyrna,

9th February, 1752, when only thirty years of age. His former

instructor, the great Linnaeus, published Hasselquist’s Iter

Palestinian, in 1757, and in this work and his later Syst. Nature,

gave the bird the names Charadrius egyptius for egypticusj.


Vieillot proposed the generic name Pluvianus in 1816, and,

though some authors have used other names, the bird is now

almost universally called Pluvianus egyptius (Linnaeus).


In English it is called the Egyptian Plover, the Black-

backed Courser, the Rain Plover, the Crocodile Bird or the

Black-headed Plover, which last name was applied to the bird by

Latham, as long ago as 1785.


Buffon called it “ Le Pluvian,” in 1781, and its modern

French appellation is “ Le Pluvian d’Egypte.”


In German it is called “ Der Krokodilwachter.”



