EASTERN TURNSTONE. 
America, as shown above, is quite a different bird to its Palearctic relative. 
It is smaller and more highly coloured, and lacks the extensive black areas of 
interpres, besides lacking the chestnut and black mottling of that bird on the 
median wing-coverts. The scapulars and tertiary plumes are usually without 
the black, and are much more highly and more extensively chestnut” . . . 
(p. 415) ‘‘ In interpres the contrast of dark colour and chestnut on the scapulars 
and tertials is nearly always sharp : in morinella it is nearly always blended. 
The first is mostly black, the latter mostly clove brown . . . The feet and 
legs of inorinella lack the rich, deep orange red or vermilion color of interpres. 
They are orange red in color, but pale in contrast to the deeper and highly 
colored interpres'^'' ... (p. 417) “That morinella has escaped its proper place 
till now is due to several causes . . . the absence of specimens in American 
museums showing what the European bird really is, and also a lack of home 
specimens and ... a lack in European collections of a series properly 
made of fresh skins of the American bird. For instance, Mr. Seebohm had but 
two unsexed specimens of morinella, yet had positive views.” 
In view of this last sentence Palmer’s own conclusions read quaintly, as 
he writes : “I have examined in aU 167 specimens — 85 of interpres, 82 of 
morinella^'* — and then gives a table showing that only three European males 
and one Greenland male had been examined. The average wing of the three 
European males is given as 5.99 inches, and the wing of the Greenland male 
was — “ ? ” Yet Palmer diagnosed the species thus : — 
Large ; wing usually more than 6.00 . . . . A. interpres. 
Smaller; wing nearly always less than 6.00 .. A. mwinella. 
Probably Palmer relied on the measurements in the Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., 
Vol. XXIV., for his wing- values, but of course this was inadmissible as 
authors measure so differently. ' 
Palmer separated the birds specifically, and this was recognised in the 
10th Suppl. to the A.O.U. ChecUist, AuJc Vol. XVIII., p. 297, 1901, though 
apparent^ Oberholser {Osprey, Vol. IV., p. 96, 1900) had already recorded 
their intergradation. In the Auh, Vol. XXIII., p. 335, 1906, Bishop again 
recorded this fact, and then in the 14th Suppl., Auk, Vol. XXV., 
p. 368, they were recognised as only worthy of subspecific distinction. No 
further comparison of Alaskan specimens with European birds seems to have 
been made. 
Although hundreds of these birds are available to me, about three hundred 
being contained in the collection of the British Museum, no long series of 
breeding birds have yet been collected and comparatively few fully-plumaged 
birds are at hand. When such are examined, however, there can be no 
VOL. m. 
9 
