''Attagis '' is a genus of

seedsnipe The seedsnipes are a small family, Thinocoridae, of small gregarious waders which have adapted to a herbivorous diet. The family is divided into two genera, '' Attagis'' and '' Thinocorus'', each containing two species. The family has a South A ...

, a

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

n family of small gregarious

wader 245px, A flock of Dunlins and Red knots">Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflat ...

s which have adapted to a vegetarian diet. These birds look superficially like

partridge A partridge is a medium-sized galliform bird in any of several genera, with a wide native distribution throughout parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Several species have been introduced to the Americas. They are sometimes grouped in the Perd ...

s in structure and bill shape. They have short legs and long wings. Their 2-3 eggs are laid in a shallow scrape on the ground. The genus was erected by the French ornithologists Isidore Saint-Hilaire and René Lesson in 1831 with the rufous-bellied seedsnipe (''Attagis gayi'') as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

. The name ''Attagis'' is the word used for a game bird in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

texts. It probably referred to the black francolin (''Francolinus francolinus'').

Species

The genus contains two species: These are the larger of the four seedsnipe species.

References

* ''Shorebirds'' by Hayman, Marchant and Prater {{Taxonbar, from=Q2220919 Bird genera Taxa named by René Lesson