48 



LONG-LEGGED AVOSET. 

 RECURriMOSTBA HIMAJVTOPUS. 

 [Plate LVIIL— Fig. 2.] 



Long-legged Tlover, JLrct. Zool, p. 487, J^o. 405. — ^Turton, y. 416. — Bewick, II, 21. — JJEcliassCf 

 Buff. VIII, 114. PL Enl. 878.— Peale's Mnseurrii JVo. 4210. 



NATURALISTS have most unaccountably classed this bird 

 with the genus Charadrius, or Plover, and yet affect to make the 

 particular conformation of the bill, legs and feet the rule of their 

 arrangement. In the present subject, however, excepting the tri- 

 vial circumstance of the want of a hind toe, there is no resem- • 

 blance whatever of those parts to the bill, legs or feet of the Plo- 

 ver ; on the contrary, they are so entirely different, as to create no 

 small surprise at the adoption and general acceptation of a classi- 

 fication, evidently so absurd and unnatural. This appears the 

 more reprehensible, when we consider the striking affinity there is 

 between this bird and the common Avoset, not only in the parti- 

 cular form of the bill, nostrils, tongue, legs, feet, wings and tail, 

 but extending to the voice, manners, food, place of breeding, form 

 of the nest, and even the very color of the eggs of both ; all of which 

 are strikingly alike, and point out, at once, to the actual observer 

 of nature, the true relationship of these remarkable birds. 



Strongly impressed with these facts, from an intimate ac- 

 quaintance with the living subjects, in their native wilds, I have 

 presumed to remove the present species to the true and proper 

 place assigned it by nature; and shall now proceed to detail some 

 particulars of its history. 



This species arrives on the sea coast of New Jersey about the 

 twenty-fifth of April, in small detached flocks, of twenty or thirty 



