THE BIKBS OF AUSTRALIA. 
Hce'tnalo'pus ostralegus finschi Martens ; New Zealand. 
New Zealand examples are easily separated from those from Australia by 
their longer bills ; but in the series available they seem to suffer from either 
interbreeding with the Sooty form or a strong tendency to melanism. 
The specimen Rothschild named H, reischehi is matched by another in 
the British Museum, while in the Rothschild collection is a bird agree- 
ing absolutely with the description of one in the Canterbury Museum given 
by Buffer in the Birds of New Zealand^ p. 225, 1873, who, however, classed 
it under Hce7natopus unicolor. It has the white wing-patch of H. ostralegus^ 
while the breast, abdomen, under-wing, axiffaries, and tail-coverts are mixed 
black and white, ’^vith a few white tips to the rump-feathers only. I woidd 
ally it to H. ostralegus in preference to H. unicolor, as in addition to the white 
wing-patch there is a whitish patch on the inner webs of the primaries, a 
character quite foreign to the latter. 
It should be noted that the encroachment of black on to the lower-back 
in the case of li. o. hngirostris, has become exaggerated and covered the 
rump in the specimen named H. reischeki. 
In this connection it is interesting to note that the Falkland Islands Pied 
Oystercatcher, known as H. leucopus Lesson, has the black permanently on 
to the rump, the upper tail-coverts alone being pure white ; the black extends 
further down on the breast than in H. ostralegus ; the white wing-patch is 
stiff more decreased (it is less in the Australian and New Zealand, birds than 
in the European and Asiatic forms) ; the inner-wing is stiff more black, and 
the primaries are wholly without a white tendency. The relationship between 
the Falkland Islands form and the New Zealand one may be remote, in wliich 
case “ H. reischeki ” is a most interesting aberration, for I agree with Von 
Martens {Ornith. Monatsb., Vol. XIV., pp. 90-93, 1906) when he concluded 
that it was such. 
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