Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS

THE SEED-SNIPES

(Family Thinocoridce)

The Seed-Snipes, or Lark-Plovers, of which two genera and some half a dozen species are known, are all peculiar South American birds of decided Quail-like or Partridge-like appearance. They have plump bodies, short legs, long, sharp-pointed wings, and a somewhat fowl-like bill and plumage, on which account they were placed by the earlier writers among the GallincR, but since their anatomical characteristics were pointed out by Professor Garrod some thirty years ago, it became clear that their affinities, although evidently extending in several directions, are rather with the Plovers.

They frequent the bare and desolate districts from Peru and Chile to the southern extremity of the continent, occurring only on the high Andes in the northern portion of their range, but descending to sea-level in Patagonia and the Falkland Islands. Their food consists entirely of seeds, tender buds, and leaves, and their nest is a mere slight depression in the ground lined with a few grass blades. The eggs are pale gray, thickly spotted with two shades of chocolate.

The two genera are very close together, the difference being mainly in the total length of the birds and the shape of the tail, the first (Attagis), with three species, being the larger (approximating eleven inches), each having the tail rounded, while in the other (Thinocorus) the size is between six and eight and a half inches and the tail more wedge-shaped.

In Attagis gayi of Chile and Peru the plumage is ashy gray above, blotched and vermiculated with black, and pale cinnamon, marked with narrow wavy lines of blackish below. Similar but much darker is A. chimborazensis of the high mountains of Ecuador, while A. malouinus of the Straits of Magellan and the Falkland Islands is distinguished by its white breast and abdomen. Comparatively little is known of their habits.

Of the members of the other genus the information is fortunately more extensive, the Common Seed-Snipe (T. rumicivorus), which ranges from Patagonia to Bolivia, being especially abundant on the plains of Patagonia and migrating northward to the pampas of Argentina in winter.

It is a plump-bodied bird, the smallest of the family, attaining a length of only six inches, the coloration being buffy brown marked and banded with black above and white beneath, with a broad band of black on each side of the throat, which unites and expands into a collar on the fore neck. Mr. Hudson states that the legs and feet are extremely small and feeble, and scarcely able to sustain the weight of the body.”When alighting the Seed-Snipe drops its body directly upon the ground and sits close like a Goatsucker; when rising it rushes suddenly away with the wild, hurried flight and sharp, scraping alarm-cry of a Snipe.

They usually go in flocks of about forty or fifty individuals and fly rapidly, keeping very close together. On the ground, however, they are always much scattered, and are so reluctant to rise that they will allow a person to walk or ride through the flock without taking wing, each bird creeping into a little hollow in the surface or behind a tuft of grass to escape observation.

During its winter sojourn on the pampas the flock always selects as a feeding ground a patch of whitish argillaceous earth, with a scanty withered vegetation; and here when the birds crouch motionless on the ground, to which their gray plumage so closely assimilates in color, it is most difficult to detect them. If a person stands close to or in the midst of a flock, the birds will presently betray their presence by answering each other with a variety of strange notes, resembling the cooing of Pigeons, loud taps on a hollow ground, and other mysterious sounds, which seem to come from beneath the earth.”D'Or-bigny's Seed-Snipe (T. orbignyanus) is easily distinguished by its larger size; it is found in Peru, where in the Puna region it reaches an elevation of 12,000 to 14,000 feet, in Bolivia, Chile, and western Argentina.

 

 

 

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