GRALLATORES. 395 



[163.] 1. Limosa fedoa. (Vieillot.) Great Marbled Godwit. 



Genus, Limosa, Briss. 



The greater American Godwit. Edwards, pi. 137- 



Great Godwit, Penk. Arct. Zool., ii., p. 405, No. 371- 



Marbled Godwit, Idem, SuppL, p. 68, No. 471 *. 



Great Marbled Godwit (Scolopax fedoa). Wilson, vii., p. 30, pi. 50, f. 4, female. 



Limosa fedoa {American Godwit). Sab., Frank. Joum., p. 089. Bonap., Syn., No. 200. 



Wasawuck apieshew, Cree Indians. Curlew, Residents at Hudson's Bay. 



This bird abounds in the interior of the fur countries, and is particularly 

 plentiful on the Saskatchewan plains, where it frequents marshy places, walking 

 on the surface of the sphagna, and thrusting- its bill among* them up to the 

 nostrils ; the stomachs of those which we killed, when so engaged, were filled 

 with fragments of leeches. It is merely a bird of passage in the United States, 

 wintering further to the southward. Males killed on the 21st of June were 

 beginning to moult ; the plumage of the females, at the same period, appearing 

 much worn, but shewing no new feathers. 



DESCRIPTION 



Of a female killed on the Saskatchewan plains, May 6, 1827. 



Colour. — Upper plumage liver-brown, each feather spotted or barred with different tints 

 of wood-brown. On the top of the head the dark colour is but narrowly edged with the paler, 

 and on the neck it is confined to central stripes. On the fore part of the back, the scapulars, 

 tertiaries, and middle coverts, the wood-brown forms transverse spots or bars ; on the rump, 

 tail, and its coverts, the pale bars are broader than the dark ones. The two upper rows of 

 Aving coverts are merely fringed with wood-brown. Four greater quills blackish-brown, edged 

 with buff; their inner webs, the remaining quills, the secondaries, and part of the greater 

 coverts, buff-orange sprinkled with black ; shaft of the first quill brownish white. Streak 

 from the nostrils to the upper eye-lid and the chin white ; cheeks the same, streaked with 

 black. Under plumage bright wood-brown, with small liver-brown spots on the neck ; breast 

 and flanks barred with the same. The whole inside of the wings and under surface of the 

 tail reddish-orange. Bill above and at the tip blackish-brown ; on the sides and beneath, 

 flesh-coloured. Legs greenish-black. 



The sexes are alike in plumage, but the female is a third larger. The colours vary with 

 the season, the wood-brown approaching at first to buff-orange, but towards the June moult, 



* Edwards figured an individual which was brought from Hudson's Bay by Mr. Isham in 1745; but Latham, on 

 obtaining specimens from the same quarter by Mr. Hutchins, introduced a nominal species (Marbled Godwit, SuppL 

 Syn., p. 245), retaining, at the same time, Edwards's species, and also, through a misapprehension of Mr. Hutchins's 

 notes, erroneously enumerating the common European Godwit among the birds of Hudson's Bay. He confounds the 

 limosa rvfa and melanura of modern ornithologists under the name of Common Godwit, quoting as a synonym of the 

 latter, Mr. Hutchins's manuscript name of Wasawuck apseshew, which belongs exclusively to Limosa fedoa. — R. 



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