338 
YELLOW - SHANKS SNIPE. 
secondaries edged, and all the coverts edged and tipped, with white ; 
shafts hlack ; eye also black ; legs and naked thighs long and yellow ; 
outer toe united to the middle one by a slight membrane ; claws a horn 
color. The female can scarcely be distinguished from the male. 
Note. — Mr. Ord in his reprint gives the following more minute 
description, of a female, shot on the twenty-second of April : " length 
upwards of ten inches, breadth twenty inches ; irides brown ; bill 
slender, straight, an inch and a half in length, and black, mandibles 
of equal length, the upper bent downwards at the tip ; throat, lower 
parts, thighs, and under tail coverts, white — the last are generally 
marked on their exterior vanes with brown ; those next to the tail 
barred with the same ; lower part of the neck, with the breast, gray, 
the feathers streaked down their centres with dusky ; head and back 
part of the neck black, the plumage edged with gray, in some specimens 
edged with brown ash, upper parts black, with oblong spots of white, 
intermixed with pale brown feathers ; rump brown, edged with white ; 
upper tail coverts white, barred with brown ; the tail is composed of 
twelve feathers, white, barred with ashy brown, the upper feathers, in 
some, gray brown, marked on their vanes, though not across, with brown 
and white ; wings, when closed, extend somewhat beyond the tail ; 
primaries and secondaries dusky ; shaft of first primary whitish above, 
the rest of the shafts brown above, in some black, all white below ; 
lesser wing coverts dusky, slightly edged with white, and in some spotted 
with brown on the exterior vanes ; secondaries slightly edged with 
white ; legs bare above the knees upwards of an inch ; length of tarsus 
two inches ; outer toe connected as far as the first joint to the middle 
one, the membrane of the inner toe quite small ; legs and feet yellow 
ochre ; the claw of the middle toe has the appearance of having a sup- 
plemental nail at its base. A young male shot at the same time, had 
its upper parts mixed with cinereous." 
