The Broad-Billed Sandpiper. "^ 



Family—SCOL OP A CID^. 



Broad-Billed Sandpiper. 



Limicola platyrhyncha, Temm. 



IT has always seemed tome that this bird and the last are very closely related; 

 there is a very great similarity in the bills, in the summer plumage of the 

 upper parts, and in the habits ; both have four posterior notches to the sternum 

 and the sterna closely resemble one another. 



The Broad-billed Sandpiper is readily distinguished by its beak, which is 

 wider laterally than perpendicularly. It is another of the birds which would 

 naturally be expected to occur oftener in Britain than is the case, as it breeds not 

 uncommonly in the swamps of Norway. Only seven undoubted records of its 

 occurrence with us are extant, however, while no less than fifteen at once have been 

 met with on Heligoland (Gatke, " Heligoland, etc." p. 508). It has not been met 

 with in Iceland or the Faeroes, but breeds, as has been mentioned, on the fells of 

 Scandinavia down to about lat. 61°, in Finland, Northern Russia, and probably 

 across Northern Asia ; but direct evidence of this is wanting, except at Lake 

 Baikal (Dybowski), and the sea of Okhotsk (Middendorf). On migration it passes 

 through. Denmark in some numbers, and Central Europe (but is rare west of a 

 line drawn from the west of Denmark to Italy). It winters in the Mediterranean 

 basin and Eastern Africa down to Madagascar. It passes on migration through 

 Central Asia, not uncommonly down the China coasts, whence I have seen a 

 dozen or more specimens ; and is found in winter on the coasts of India, Ceylon, 

 the Andamans, Burmah, the Malay Peninsula, Java, and the Philippines. 



Description of adults in summer (^ ^ ? ? Dovrefjeld, June, 1882). Bill about 

 \\ inches long, dark brown, higher at the base, flattened out laterally towards the 

 end ; iris dark brown ; crown rich dark brown ; sides of head buffy- white, with a 

 dark brown stripe from bill to eye, and another some distance above the eye; 

 upper parts generally of the same dark brown as the crown, with higher margins 

 to the feathers; these, on the shoulders, are rusty, on the scapulars and wing- 

 coverts buffy-white, on the tertiaries, where they are very conspicuous, rufous ; 

 primaries nearly black, with white shafts, the first the longest ; central tail-feathers 

 (and their coverts) black, narrowly edged with rufous, the rest grey, edged with 



