TOT ANUS. 



369 



Plates.— Daub. PI. Enl. no. 843 ; Gould, Birds Gt. Brit. iv. pi. 56 ; Dresser, Birds of Europe, Literature 



viii. pi. 564. 

 Habits. — Seebohm, British Birds, iii. p. 126. 

 Eggs.— Seebohm, British Birds, pi. 30. figs. 1, 2, 3. 



Geographi- 

 cal distribu- 

 tion. 



The Green Sandpiper has wJiite upper tail-coverts and brown axillaries narrowly barred Specific 

 witli wliite. No other Totanus combines both these characters. On the American continent •=^^''^°^®'^^' 

 it is represented by T. solitarius, which scarcely differs from it except that the central 

 upper tail-coverts are dark like the ramp. 



The breeding-range of the Green Sandpiper reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 

 in the west extending somewhat north of the Arctic Circle, but in the east scarcely reaching 

 that latitude. It. is not known that this bird is more than a spring and autumn visitor to 

 the British Islands, the north of France, Holland, Belgium, or Western Germany ; but it 

 has been recorded as breeding in the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathians, and the Caucasus. 

 Further east the southern limit of its breeding-range appears to be Turkestan and the 

 mountains of Southern Siberia. It has been said to breed in Japan and North China ; 

 but the evidence of this is very unsatisfactory, although it certainly winters in both those 

 countries, as well as in Cochin China, Burma, India, Ceylon, and westwards, in suitable 

 locabties, throughout Persia, South Europe, and the whole of Africa. 



Its alleged occurrence in Nova Scotia (Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, Water-Birds 

 N. Amer. i. p. 282) is supported by entirely untrustworthy evidence. 



The Green Sandpiper has been removed from the genus Totanus and placed in a 

 genus of its own on the ground that it has only one posterior emargination on each side of 

 the keel of the sternum. It is very unfortunate that this heresy should have received the 

 sanction of the ' Ibis List.' It is impossible to suppose that this character can be of any 

 generic value in this group. As Messrs. A. and E. Newton very justly observe (Phil. 

 Trans. Royal Soc. 1869, p. 337), " In the Limicolee ... a very great diversity of 

 conformation of the posterior margin of the sternum exists, even among forms which are, 

 both in general habits and outward structure, very closely allied." 



Pseudo- 

 genera. 



TOTANUS TEREKIUS. 



TEREK SANDPIPER. 



Totanus primariis uropygioque baud albo notatis : secundariis pro majore parte albis : axillaribus Diagnosis, 

 omnino albis. 



No local races of this species are known. 



Variations. 



3b 



