Identity Of The Green With The Wood-Sandpiper

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Title:     Identity Of The Green With The Wood-Sandpiper
Author: Thomas Garnett [More Titles by Garnett]

To the Editor of the "Magazine of Natural History."

The question whether the Green and the Wood-Sandpiper are the same species seems from Rennie's edition of Montagu's "Ornithological Dictionary" to be undecided; but as a specimen has just come under my notice which appears to me to clear up this difficulty, I shall offer no apology for sending a description of it.

The length from the bill to the tail is 10 inches, to the end of the toes, 11 3/4 inches; breadth, 17 inches; thigh-joint to the toe, 5 1/2 inches. The bill measures 1 5/8 inches from the corner of the mouth, and is very slender; the upper mandible, which is black and slightly curved at the point, is a little longer than the lower one, which is a dark green at the base and black at the point; a dark streak extends from the base of the upper mandible to the corner of the eye, and above it is a patch of dirty white intermixed with minute dusky spots; a small circle of dirty white surrounds the eyes; the chin is white; the cheeks, throat, and forepart of the neck white, spotted with dusky, with which colour a few laminae of each feather are marked their whole length. The breast has a dappled stripe of the same colour as the throat running down the middle of it; with this exception it is white, as are also the belly, vent, and under tail-coverts. The crown of the head and hinder part of the neck are a dingy brown, which on the neck has a shade of ash colour; the bend of the wing and lesser wing-coverts are a brownish black; the whole upper surface of the plumage is of a glossy brownish-green, which is spotted on the middle wing-coverts with minute white spots, that change to a dingy yellow on the back, scapulars, and tertials, the last of which have twelve spots on the outer margin of the feathers, and six on the inner one; the tertials are very long, the longest of them reaching to within a quarter of an inch of the extreme top of the wing, which reaches to the end of the tail; the quill feathers are wholly black, as are also the secondaries; the upper part of the rump is black, and each feather is slightly tipped with white, which forms small wavy lines on that part of the plumage; the lower part of the rump and upper tail-coverts are pure white; the tail, which is even at the end, consists of twelve feathers, which are barred with black and white alternately.

At the end of Bewick's description of the Green Sandpiper there is a very exact representation of a covert feather of the tail, and an inner-wing covert, which will give a better idea of their appearance than a page of letterpress. The legs are dark green, the outer toe connected with the middle one by a membrane as far as the first joint; toes very slender, middle one 1 1/4 inch long; weight, 2 3/4 oz. Killed on the 17th September, 1831, near Stonyhurst.

I have been thus minute in my description from a wish to clear up the doubt that appears to exist as to the identity of these two birds. The one I have now before me is, undoubtedly, the Green Sandpiper of Bewick, but it corresponds in so many particulars with the Wood Sandpiper of Montagu, and appears to combine so many of the peculiarities of both without exactly agreeing with either, that I think it proves their identity satisfactorily. The glossy green of the upper plumage and the barring of the under wing- coverts and the tail identify this bird with the Green Sandpiper; whilst on the other side the yellowish spots on the scapulars and tertials, the black rump, the length of the leg, and the web between the outer and middle toes are characteristic of the Wood Sandpiper of Montagu.

[The end]
Thomas Garnett's essay: Identity Of The Green With The Wood-Sandpiper

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