EURINORHYNCHUS PYGM^EUS.
Spoon-billed Sandpiper.
Plataleapygmtca, Linn. Mus. Ad. R id ., tom. ii., Prod. p. 20.—Id. Syst. Na t., 12th edit., tom. i. p. 231 ; Gmel.
edit., tom. i. p. 615.
Eurinorhynchus griseus, Temm. Man. d’Orn., 2nd edit., tom. ii. p. 594.—Nilss. Orn. Suec., tom. ii. p. 2 9 .-^ |e rd .
Birds o f India, vói. ii. p a r t ii. p . 693.
— pygnueus, P ears. Jcmm. Asiat. Soc. Beng., vol. v. p. 1 2 7—Id . Asiat. Res., vol. xix. p. 69, pi. 9.—
Bonap. Compt. Rend., tom. xliii. p. 596.—Gray & Mitch. Gen. o f Birds, vol. iii. p. 580, pis. 152 and
156. fig. 6.—Harting, in Ibis, 1869, p. 426.—Gray, Hand-list o f Birds, part iii. p. 51.—Swinh. in Ibis,
1867, pp. 234, 235.
— orientalis, Blyth, Ann. & Mag. o f Nat. Hist., 1844, vol. xiii. pp. 178, 1 79—Id . Cat. of Birds in
Mus. Asiat. Soc. Calcutta, p. 270.
N ot More than twenty-four specimens of this highly curious little Sandpiper have been collected in a hundred
years ; and besides these, few others have been seen or satisfactorily determined as being identical with this
rare bird. Limueus was comparatively but a young man when he first became aware of the existence of such an
anomaly. Nothing was then recorded respecting its history ; nor should we have known where to look for the
bird, had not other examples been obtained from time to time during the interval between the date when Linnmus
wrote (1764) and that of Mr. Swinhoe’s visit to China in 1866 (vide Ibis, 1867, p. 234). Had the illustrious
Swede’s specimen been the only one known, we might naturally have supposed that it was a mere lusus or freak
of nature—an accidental dilatation o f the mandibles of a Little Stint or some nearly allied species, so closely
does the Eurinorhynchus assimilate to those birds ; but as all the examples since discovered are alike, there
is no doubt in my mind as to the specific if not the generic value of its distinguishing characters. Besides
the general resemblance of its structure, the bird undergoes precisely the same changes of plumage in
winter and summer as the Little Stint (Actodronias minuta) the grey, white, and brown plumage of winter
giving place to a russet-red colouring, more or less diffused, at the opposite season.
The habitat of Linnaeus s example was stated to be Surinam ; but this is a point which cannot now be determined:
the chances are that a wrong locality was given to him, and that the temperate regions of the
Old World and some parts of the Arctic Circle are its true home— the winter being spent at the sandy
mouths o f the great rivers of China and Asia generally, whence the bird retires northward to breed in
those high regions upon which man has not yet entered, but where, doubtless, many others of our rarer
Sandpipers lay their eggs and reproduce their young. Still this is mere surmise ; and I might not have
suspected such a probability had not the specimen in full summer plumage, now in the new Museum at
Oxford, been collected on the verge of the polar seas.
An elaborate essay respecting this species having been published by Mr. Harting, I will say no more,
but give this gentleman all the credit he deserves for the masterly manner in which he has treated the
subject, by transcribing a large part of what he has said in ‘ The Ibis ’ for 1869.
“ Notwithstanding the vagrant habits of the species which compose the Limicola, and the increasing researches
o f naturalists in all quarters of the globe, it is remarkable that a bird which was described more
than a century ago by Linnasus should still be one o f the rarest and least-known. From a perusal of
all that has hitherto been published with reference to this species, it would appear that those who followed
more immediately in the wake o f Linnasus did little else than copy his original description, perpetuating
by so doing the erroneous habitat which had been assigned to the bird, and adding little or nothing to
its history. Under the name of Platalea pygmcea or Eurynorhiynchus griseus, certain authors have created
some confusion by describing birds which were properly referable to some other species ; while the few
original descriptions on record have all been taken from specimens which were procured in the winter
plumage. For a long time the true habitat of Eurynorlynchus was unknown ; and even a t the present
day its precise geographical range remains undetermined.
“[The earliest notice of this species is to be found in an octavo catalogue usually appended to his
‘Museum Ludovicae Ulricae Reginae Suecorum,’ &c., published by Linnaeus in 1764, but entitled ‘ Museum
Adolphi Friderici Regis Suecorum,’ &c., Tomi secundi Prodromus. He, no doubt from the form o f the
bill, referred this species to the genus Platalea ; a comparison, however, shows that beyond ' this resemblance
it has really no connexion with that form. Its affinities, as pointed out by Cuvier and Temminck,
are certainly with the genus Tringa ; . . . at the same time it differs sufficiently to justify the course which
Nilsson adopted in forming for its reception the new genus Eurynorhyxichus, in which at present it stands alone.