Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.Various
History
Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.
Various
Science -- Periodicals
This bird is like in shape to most others of the tringa or snipe kind.
Its size is better shewn by the figure lying before you (_See_ TAB.
VI.), than by the dried bird, which is much shrunk since the drawing of
it was made. I chuse, by way of distinction, to name it the coot-footed
tringa, as it differs from other birds of that genus no otherwise, than
in having its toes webbed in the same particular manner as the fulica,
or our bald-coot. One of its feet is shewn in the plate, magnified a
little, to make it the better understood, in what manner the webs or
membranes spreading on both sides of the toes are scalloped or indented
at each of the toe-joints. These scallopings are finely pectinated on
their outer edges, as the enlarged figure expresses. The hinder toe is
small, and finely pectinated on the under side. The bill is black, and
channelled on both sides of the upper mandible; in which channels the
nostrils are placed near the forehead: it is compressed somewhat like a
duck’s bill, and ridged along its upper part, as a figure of the head
in the corner of the plate may shew. The lower head, figured with it,
is intended to shew the bill (which is very narrow) of another species
of coot-footed tringa, brought from North America, and described and
figured in my Natural History of Birds, _&c._ plate 46. The eyes are
placed farther backward from the bill than in many other sorts of
birds; in which the wisdom of Providence is remarkable: for birds of
this genus commonly feeding in soft muddy ground on the banks of rivers
or the sea, have occasion to thrust their bills deep into the shores,
to extract worms and insects; and their eyes would be in danger, were
they placed more forward. The fore part of the head, the neck, breast,
belly, thighs, covert-feathers withinside the wings and under the tail,
are white: the top and hinder part of the head is black. The lower part
of the neck behind, and the back, are of a blueish ash or slate-colour,
with a mixture of blackish or dusky: the upper sides of the wings and
tail are of a blackish or dusky colour: the tips of the covert of the
wings are white; the tips of the middlemost or shortest of the quills
are also white, and form white transverse bars across the wings. Two or
three of the middle quills are wholly white, and all of them have their
inner webs white toward their bottoms. It hath twelve feathers in the
tail; the outermost of which, on each side, is edged with white. The
covert-feathers on the rump, or upper side of the tail, are dusky and
white. The legs are bare of feathers above the knees (as they are in
most birds, who wade in shallow waters), and of an ash-colour.
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