OF THE BEITISH ISLANDS. 259 



Family CHARADRIID^. Genus Heteroptgia. 



Subfamily ScOLOPAClNJE. 



BONAPARTE'S SANDPIPER. 



HETEEOPYGIA EUSCICOLLIS-(7*eiZZoi). 



Trjnga fuscicollis, Vieill. N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xxxiv. p. 461 (1819) ; Dresser, B. 

 Eur. viii. p. 15, pi. 547 (1873) ; Dixon, Nests and Eggs Non-indig. Brit. B. p. 261 

 (1894) ; Lilford, Col. Pig. Brit. B. pt. xxxiv. (1897). 



Tringa schinzii, Bonaparte (nee Brehm) ; Macgill. Brit. B. iv. p. 222 (1852) ; Yarrell, 

 Brit. B. ed. 4, iii. p. 373 (1883). 



Tringa bonaparti, Schlegel ; Seebohm, Hist. Brit. B. iii. p. 189 (1885) ; Seebohm, Col. 

 Pig. Eggs Brit. B. p. 145, pi. 43 (1896). 



Heteropygia fuscicollis (Vieill.), Sharpe, Hanb. B. Gt. Brit. iii. p. 242 (1896) ; Sharpe, 

 Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxiv. p. 574 (1896). 



Geographical distribution — British: Bonaparte's Sandpiper is an 

 accidental straggler to our area on autumn migration, having occurred chiefly 

 in October and jSTovember. Its claim to rank as British rests on the following 

 recorded instances. England: Shropshire (one example), Sussex (two examples), 

 Middlesex (one example) , Devonshire (four examples) , Cornwall (three examples) , 

 Scilly Isles (two examples) . Scotland : Not been obtained. Ireland : One example 

 said to have been shot near Belfast, and now preserved in the museum of that 

 town. Foreign : Nearctic and Neotropical regions. In the Northern hemisphere 

 Bonaparte's Sandpiper breeds throughout Arctic America from Greenland in the 

 east to the Mackenzie River in the west. It is of only accidental occurrence west 

 of the Rocky Mountains, two examples having been obtained at Point Barrow, 

 the most northerly land in Alaska ; whilst another has been recently recorded 

 from Franz Josef Land. It passes the United States, inland as well as along 

 the coast, and the Bermudas (abnormally) on migration, and winters in the 

 West Indies, Central America, and throughout the South American portion of the 

 Intertropical realm. There can be little or no doubt that in Bonaparte's Sandpiper 

 we have another instance of a species migrating north and south from an 

 equatorial base. In the Southern hemisphere this Sandpiper appears unquestion- 

 ably to breed in the Argentine, in Patagonia and the Falkland Islands^ although 

 the nest has not yet been actually discovered, and statements made by Durnford 

 and Abbott respecting its breeding in these localities have been derided. 



