EASTERN BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER. 
If this description should however be considered insufficient, the 
following year Brunnich, in the Ornith. Boreal, p. 49, 1764, redescribed in 
detail the same bird. It is probable that Th. Brunnich really wrote the 
diagnostic description given in Pontoppidan’s work. Brunnich’s description 
reads : — 
Scolopax falcinellus, rostro depresso, apicibus decurvatis, corpore fusco lituris luteis, 
rectricibus cinereis apice albis, intermediis nigris immaculatis. 
Pontop. atl. dan. I. t. 26, fig. 4. Siaelandis Ryle. Domsneppe. Rescr. Rostro infra 
nares depresso, planiusculo, apicibus decurvatis, caput, collum, dorsumque fusca lituris 
luteis, alae cinereae, remiges primores nigricantes, tectrices harum apicibus albis, 
secundariae cinereae, a latere exterior! versus apicem ad racbin usque incisae; posticae 
longiores margine ferrugineo; apicibus albis, intermediae nigrae immaculatae ; tectrices 
caudae superiores ex albo nigroque variae. E. Siaelandia. 
Ob rostrum, capite multo longius, eum inter scolopaces descripsi. 
This description is quite complete, and no reason can be urged against its 
acceptance. 
The Eastern form is again much lighter than the Western or European one 
when in summer-plumage, so that Dresser separated it, giving a very good 
description but granting it specific rank. He wrote : “ [The Siberian bird] 
differs in the summer plumage in having the feathers on the crown and entire 
upper parts very broadly margined with bright rufous, so as to give this 
colour extreme prominence ”... “ The general colouration [of the Euro- 
pean form] of the upper parts is black, the margins to the feathers being 
narrow and white or ochreous white, and the crown is very dark ” . . . “in 
the winter plumage the eastern one appears to be a trifie paler than the 
European bird.” Notwithstanding such a clear account, which I find to 
be quite accurate, the two forms were lumped without comment in the 
Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., Vol. XXIV., p. 612, imder the name Limicola 
platyrhyncha But even this specific name was not the oldest available 
if Brunnich’s was ignored, as Bechstein described the bird under the 
name Numenius pusillus. 
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