ORIENTAL DOTTEREL. 
wing in mobs they utter a whistle that sounds as though it was produced 
through a muffled pea whistle.” 
Further* : “ Arrived 21st and 22nd September, 1902, and my last note of 
them in the following autumn was 10th March. On the 2nd October, 1903, 
their short sharp note caught my ear at day-light, and hurrying out I was 
in time to see three, the first of the season, flash past. Later in the day I saw 
sixteen more and those are the only birds I saw that summer.” 
Againf : “ It is the most regular migrant of all the Limicoline birds that 
visit the Richmond district. Arriving in September or October, generally the 
former, they leave again in March or April, again generally the former. My 
earliest and latest dates are — 8th September, 1904 and 5th April, 1905.” 
The adult male figured and described was collected by Mr. Tom Carter 
at Point Cloates, North-west Australia, on March 15th, 1902, and is one of 
the birds mentioned in his notes. 
The pecuhar characters of this bird can be gauged by the fact that it has 
been placed in no fewer than ten genera. It is to be hoped that its present 
disposition may be lasting. 
When first met with it was recorded under the genus Cursorius on account 
of its long legs. Gould described it as a species of Charadrius. Reichenbach 
considered it an Oreophilus, through its long slender bill. Bonaparte placed 
it in Pluvialis. Gould then thought it might be the immature of Cirrepidesmus 
asiaticus, while Harting wrote that it was a typical Eudromias. That most 
accurate worker Salvador!, recognising that, whatever it was, it was not a 
Eudromias^ classed it in jEgialites, while Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway pointed 
out that it seemed congeneric with Podasocys montanus (Townsend). When 
Seebohm lumped, he placed it in his typical section Pluviales along with 
OreopTiilus, Pluvialis^ Eudro^niaSy Zonibyx, etc., and apart from the Ring- and 
Sand-Plovers. In the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, Sharpe’s 
solution was to include it in his genus OcMhodromus, in which association it 
cannot possibly be retained. I now place it in Eupoda, introduced for 
C. asiaticus Pallas, and from which I consider it generically inseparable. As 
usual, with the later-discovered forms, it has no specific synonymy to consider, 
the only misidentifications being its reference to C. xanthocheilus, which was 
a mere guess, and to C. asiaticus from which it is easily separated by means 
of its larger size, and wholly smoky axillaries and inner wing-coverts, these 
in E» asiatica being mainly white. 
* Umu, Vol. IV., p. 46, 1904. 
t ib., Vol. VI., p. 112, 1907. 
107 
