Dowitcher

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Dowitcher
Short-billed dowitcher in JBWR (40844).jpg
Short-billed dowitcher ( Limnodromus griseus )
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Scolopacidae
Subfamily: Scolopacinae
Genus: Limnodromus
Wied-Neuwied, 1833
Type species
Scolopax noveboracensis [1] = Scolopax grisea
Gmelin. JF, 1789
Species

See text.

The three dowitchers are medium-sized long-billed wading birds in the genus Limnodromus. The English name "dowitcher" is from Iroquois, recorded in English by the 1830s. [2]

Contents

They resemble godwits in body and bill shape, and the reddish underparts in summer, but are much shorter legged, more like snipes, to which they are more closely related. [3] All three are strongly migratory.

The two North American species are difficult to separate in most plumages, and were considered a single species for many years. The Asian bird is rare and not well known.

Taxonomy

The genus Limnodromus was introduced in 1833 by the German naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied to accommodate a single species, the short-billed dowitcher. [4] [5] The name combines the Ancient Greek limnē meaning "marsh" with -dromos meaning "-racer" or "-runner". [6]

The dowitcher species are: [7]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oystercatcher</span> Genus of birds

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woodcock</span> Genus of birds

The woodcocks are a group of seven or eight very similar living species of sandpipers in the genus Scolopax. The genus name is Latin for a snipe or woodcock, and until around 1800 was used to refer to a variety of waders. The English name is first recorded in about 1050. According to the Harleian Miscellany, a group of woodcocks is called a "fall".

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Godwit</span> Genus of birds

The godwits are a group of four large, long-billed, long-legged and strongly migratory waders of the bird genus Limosa. Their long bills allow them to probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and molluscs. In their winter range, they flock together where food is plentiful. They frequent tidal shorelines, breeding in northern climates in summer and migrating south in winter. A female bar-tailed godwit made a flight of 29,000 km (18,000 mi), flying 11,680 kilometres (7,260 mi) of it without stopping. In 2020 a male bar-tailed godwit flew about 12,200 kilometres (7,600 mi) non-stop in its migration from Alaska to New Zealand, previously a record for avian non-stop flight. In October 2022, a 5 month old, male bar-tailed godwit was tracked from Alaska to Tasmania, a trip that took 11 days, and recorded a non-stop flight of 8,400 miles (13,500 km).

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The long-billed dowitcher is a medium-sized shorebird with a relatively long bill belonging to the sandpiper family, Scolopacidae. In breeding plumage, adults are characterized by a beautiful rufous head and underparts with a darker mottled back and a large white upper rump only seen in flight. They feed in various freshwater habitats with their bill underwater in a "sewing machine" motion and are known to have an exciting mating display where males chase females in flight. The genus, Limnodromus is Ancient Greek from limne, "marsh" and dromos, "racer". The specific scolopaceus is Neo-Latin for "snipe-like", from Latin scolopax, scolopacis, a snipe or woodcock. The English name is from Iroquois and was first recorded in 1841.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Short-billed dowitcher</span> Species of bird

The short-billed dowitcher, like its congener the long-billed dowitcher, is a medium-sized, stocky, long-billed shorebird in the family Scolopacidae.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied</span> German ethnologist (1782-1867)

Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied was a German explorer, ethnologist and naturalist. He led a pioneering expedition to southeast Brazil between 1815 and 1817, from which the album Reise nach Brasilien, which first revealed to Europe real images of Brazilian Indians, was the ultimate result. It was translated into several languages and recognized as one of the greatest contributions to the knowledge of Brazil at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1832 he embarked on another expedition, this time to the United States, together with the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer.

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References

  1. "Alcidae". aviansystematics.org. The Trust for Avian Systematics. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  2. "Dowitcher" . Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press.(Subscription or participating institution membership required.) The OED's earliest example is from 1841, but full-text searching gives results that suggest it was already in common use by the mid-1830s.
  3. Thomas, Gavin H.; Wills, Matthew A.; Székely, Tamás (2004). "A supertree approach to shorebird phylogeny". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 4: 28. doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-4-28 . PMC   515296 . PMID   15329156. 28.
  4. Wied-Neuwied, Maximilian (1832). Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte von Brasilien (in German). Vol. 4, Part xx. Weimar: Im Verlage des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs. p. 716.
  5. Peters, James Lee, ed. (1934). Check-List of Birds of the World. Vol. 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 272.
  6. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 227. ISBN   978-1-4081-2501-4.
  7. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (August 2022). "Sandpipers, snipes, coursers". IOC World Bird List Version 12.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 6 November 2022.