380 
PIGMY CURLEW. 
coverts white ; the feathers of the tail pale cinereous brown, with the 
shafts and the extremities margined with white ; legs dusky black.” In 
this specimen were observed the same signs of immaturity, the pale 
margin to the feathers, many of which, on the breast and belly, still 
retained the ferruginous colour, which in another month would have 
been thrown off ; while that shot at Sandwich, described by Mr. Boys, 
was without any ferruginous on those parts, and the head and neck 
were rufous brown. That which is described in the general synopsis, 
taken from a specimen shot in Holland, had the head, back, and coverts 
of the wings, mixed with brown, ferruginous, and white : thus we have 
three distinct gradations of plumage in this species, which approaches 
so very nearly to the dunlin in one change of its plumage, that were it 
not for some trifling variation, and a little difference in the bill and 
legs, they might easily be confounded by a more than ordinary orni- 
thologist. Indeed, so very nearly do these two birds approach each 
other, that, although we have no doubt of their distinction, it may be 
useful to particularise in what they essentially differ, in order that this 
species may be identified, and prevent that confusion which has pro- 
bably so long existed, and lead to a more perfect knowledge of a bird 
that may be only considered as r^re from its obscurity, caused by its 
great similarity to so plentiful a species as the dunlin. 
In the specimen from which the original description was taken, 
and the figure given in Mr. Boys’s History of Sandwich, the most 
obvious distinction between it and the dunlin, as permanent charac- 
ters, consists in the superior slenderness of the bill and the legs, as 
well as in the length of the latter. A remarkable distinction is also 
observable in the thigh, which in this is bare of feathers for half an inch 
above the knee ; whereas in the dunlin, that part is clothed to very near 
the knee-joint. The plumage of the head and neck is more inclined to 
rufous-brown, and the breast is destitute of the dusky streaks on the 
shafts of the feathers observable in the dunlin : the belly and sides are 
not of that pure white, and are wdiolly destitute of those minute spots 
so common on the sides of the dunlin : the feathers on the back and 
scapulars of this specimen of pigmea are margined with rufous-white ; 
but as these pale margins are frequent in young birds, and not in adults, 
it may not be permanent : the lower part of the rump and coverts of 
the tail are immaculate white : the tail is not so cuneiform as in the 
dunlin, although the feathers are of a similar cinereous colour : in the 
wings there is scarcely a distinction between the two birds in their 
closed state. 
