. Cuvier's animal kingdom : arranged according to its organization. Animals. 247 bear a near resemblance to those of the Avocets, with which this genus is even linked by an intermediate species, which conjoins the webbed toes of the latter with the beak of the Stilts (the //. palmatus, Gould, a native of Australia). There are three or four normal species, and both this and the next genus are ahnost generally dif- fused, frequenting muddy estuaries in winter, and salt-marshes during the season of propagation]. We can scarcely place otherwise than here The Avocets {Recurvirostra, Lin.)
. Cuvier's animal kingdom : arranged according to its organization. Animals. 247 bear a near resemblance to those of the Avocets, with which this genus is even linked by an intermediate species, which conjoins the webbed toes of the latter with the beak of the Stilts (the //. palmatus, Gould, a native of Australia). There are three or four normal species, and both this and the next genus are ahnost generally dif- fused, frequenting muddy estuaries in winter, and salt-marshes during the season of propagation]. We can scarcely place otherwise than here The Avocets {Recurvirostra, Lin.),— Although their feet, which are webbed nearly to the ends of their toes, almost entitle them to rank among the Swimming-birds ; but their lengthened tarsi and half-naked tibiae, their long, slender, pointed, smooth, and elastic bill, and the mode of life wliich results from their conformation, concur to approximate them to the Snipes. What particularly characterizes them, and distinguishes them even from all other birds [if two remarkable species of Humming-bird be excepted, the Trochilus recurvirostra and Tr. avocetta], is the strong upward curvature of their beak, [the mandibles of which have often been compared to two thin slips of whalebone]. Their legs are reticulated, and thumb too short to reach the ground. That of Europe (B. avocetta, Lin.) is white, with a black calotte and three bands of the same upon the wings, and leaden-coloured legs. It is a handsome bird, of attenuated fonn, which frequents the sea-shore in winter, [where it feeds by scooping (as it is termed), with its singular bill, drawing this through the mud or sand from right to left as it advances its left leg foremost, and vice versa, seizing whatever living prey is thus met with. Its manners in the breeding season resemble those of the Gambets, rising on wing and emitting its cry at the approach of any intruder ; it collects, however, a greater quantity of nest than is usual among the wading-birds, t
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