Category: Information

Astonishingly enough, there appear to be those who do not believe that the juvenile least sandpiper is the most beautiful of all the world’s shorebirds.

Me, I have a hard time looking away when one presents itself. Who knows what feathered wonders I miss this time of year when I’m glued to the scope eyepiece out in the marshes?

Quite apart from their stunning colors, these little sandpipers have another allure: one of them could, just could, someday turn out to be not a least but a long-toed stint, a bird I have never seen but am constantly, so far fruitlessly, on the lookout for.

The lovely little least sandpiper above — here a larger image — dazzling as it is, wasn’t a very good candidate for misidentification. The pale forehead and nape, neat dark lore stripe, and brightly fringed wing coverts were all perfect for least and all not so great for its much rare cousin. Generously enough, just to seal the deal, it also repeatedly showed me its middle toe (a gesture distinct, I assume from showing me its middle finger).

Not quite long enough, even with all that gloppy mud.

Over at the VENT blog today with a few notes about the birds of Ravenna — feathered and tesserated.

I dreamt last night that I had been elected dictator for life of the Mauritian Birding Association.

After remodeling my palace and deporting my chief rivals, my aide and I started working on the mail. And there was a lot of it: communiqués from my secret list police, abject pleas for clemency from the notorious Gang of Five Feral Felines, solicitations from tailors eager to have a part in creating my coronation robes.

One brief missive really caught my attention, though. A young mother and her daughter wrote to say that they had been watching the birdies in their back yard when they noticed a rustling along the fence — and a Rodrigues solitaire strode calmly across the lawn.

Sorry. There is simply no way that a species last seen at the beginning of the eighteenth century could have escaped detection on my little island. The solitaire is gone, kaput, extinct forever. It’s a sad thing, but true. Dispiriting, but incontrovertible.

My aide rushed to his typewriter to begin the public ridicule. He hadn’t even reached the first carriage return, though, when I tore the creamy sheet of letterhead away — and reminded him of our exalted new position. Together, we wrote something else:

To Our Dear Loyal Friends and Subjects, We thank you for your communication of the 25th inst. Unfortunately, after so many years of unfruitful searches, we can say without any doubt that our lamented solitaire is extinct. While your sighting is interesting and of course sincere, you must have had a poor look at a more common, but still just as exciting, species. To thank you for your interest in our birds and their conservation, we are pleased to grant you a year’s membership in the MBA. We hope that you enjoy our flagship publication, Leguat’s Legate, and that you will continue to be in touch with your sightings and observations from what is a very interesting corner of our domain. Regally, etc.

I woke up feeling happy to have introduced two more of my fellow Mauritians to the joy of birding.

But alas, it was only a dream.

Today we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the death of one of the real characters in French natural history, Jean-Baptiste Leblond, a physician, utopian politician, and the most restless of explorers.

Starting at the age of 19, in 1766, Leblond spent nearly 20 years walking the South American continent, from Grenada to Peru. On his return to France in 1785, he brought with him 250 pounds — pounds! — of platinum, along with a rich collection of natural history specimens.

No rest for the weary, though, and shortly thereafter he was ordered back to Cayenne, in search of new sources of quinine.

After all the effort, exhaustion, and suffering devoted to acquiring his collections, M. Leblond has made the exceedingly generous sacrifice of donating the specimens to the Paris Society of Natural History and certain of its members.

Among the donated objects were 111 South American birds, listed in the Actes of the Society for 1792. Most are identified with their Linnaean names and a citation to Buffon or Brisson, but not a few are brought down only to the genus level, with a brief description in hopes that someone someday might recognize them.

I don’t know where those specimens are now, or how many of them were eventually identified. It’s not easy, but if you want to try your hand at it, let us know how you do.