Birds of Celebes; Cbaradriidae. 
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streaked witli brown on sides, flanks and under tail-coverts; under wing-coverts 
white, mottled with brown and white against metacarpal edge; hill blackish brown, 
paler at base of lower mandible; “feet ochre-yellow, tinged with olive, and with darker 
joints; iris dark brown” (Stejneger f 3)\ wing 127 mm; tail 50; tarsus 29; mid. 
toe with claw 26.5; exposed cuhnen ca. 24 (Limbotto: Meyer — C 1940). 
The specimen described is most hkely a female. Taczanowski describes the 
female as having the russet on the top of the head less bright, the spots here and 
on the neck and breast less intense, the middle of the breast largely unspotted. 
Young. It is described as having the upper-parts bright rusty ochraceous (not brownish 
grey) with black centre-streaks, the under-parts tinted with isabelhne, the striations 
fewer and smaller. 
? Eggs. Taczanowski (30) quotes without comment a description by Meves of the eggs 
(of tin's species?), but mentions, hke Seebohm, that nothing of its nidification 
is known. 
Distribution. East Siberia (Middend. etc. 30)\ Bering Id. (Stejneger f 3]-, Alaska (Nelson 
fl, XVI, 20y, Corea (Kalinowski 19)-, Japan (Blakiston, etc. 27); China (Swinh. 1, 
David 6, etc.); Eormosa (Swinh. 2); India — Gilgit (Biddulph 9, 10)\ Philippines 
— Mindanao (Everett d 2); North Celebes — Limbotto (Rosenb. 8, Meyer 4, 7, 73); 
.lava (Horsfield a 1, de Vriese 3); Ternatc, Amboina, Ceram, Waigiou, Salawatti, 
Aru, New Guinea (cf. Salvad. 77, 23); Australia and Tasmania (cf. Ramsay 78); 
Pelew Is. (Tetens 23); New Caledonia (Marie 23); New Zealand (Buller77). Has 
occurred in Europe: England (Ground XXVIII). 
This far-ranging traveller was first recorded from Celebes by Meyer, who 
got it at Lake Limbotto, curiously enough in July (7), affording another instance, 
apparently, of birds staying out of the general migration. If Rosenberg’s (8) 
identification is correct, four examples were previously obtained by him at the 
same spot. 
The breeding grounds of the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper are as yet unknown ; 
probably they lie in parts of the east and north of Siberia and the arctic is- 
lands still further north. Middendorff saw it on the south shore of the Sea 
of Ochotsk in July, but in Bering Island Stejneger obtained it only during 
the autumnal migration of 1882. It is known in China from the observations 
of David, Styan and De La Touche as a bird which passes by on migration; 
such it is, too, according to Seebohm, in Japan. The migration probably passes 
on through the East Indies to Australia, though the absence of records from 
Borneo and Sumatra and the rarity of specimens from Celebes, Java and the 
Philippines (as yet, apparently, there is one example from Mindanao only) may 
possibly be due to the main body of the migrants holding a more eastern course 
across the Pacific, a view which the occurrence of the bird in the Pelew Islands 
and New Zealand seems to support. 
Far away from its proper territories a single adult individual was shot in 
1892 on Breydon mudflats, Norfolk, by Mr. T. Ground, who found it in company 
with a Ringed Plover and three or four Dunlins. The only specimen as yet 
recorded from the Indian countries was killed in Gilgit by Major Biddulph; 
it was flying with a number of Ruffs (Machetes fiignaoo). 
Meyer k Wigl esTirortli, Birds of Celebes (Dec. 7th, 1897). 
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