The three dowitchers are medium-sized long-billed wading

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

''Limnodromus''. The English name "dowitchers" is from

Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

, recorded in English by the 1830s. 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. They resemble

godwit The godwits are a group of 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 floc ...

s in body and bill shape, and the reddish underparts in summer, but are much shorter legged, more like

snipe A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and cryptic/ camouflaging plumage. The '' Gallinago'' snipes have ...

to which they are also somewhat more closely related. All three are strongly migratory. The two

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

n species are difficult to separate in most plumages, and were considered a single species for many years. The

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

n bird is rare and not well known.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Limnodromus'' was introduced in 1833 by the German naturalist

Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (23 September 1782 – 3 February 1867) was a German explorer, ethnologist and naturalist. He led a pioneering expedition to southeast Brazil between 1815–1817, from which the album ''Reise na ...

to accommodate a single species, the short-billed dowitcher. The name combines the

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 pe ...

''limnē'' meaning "marsh" with ''-dromos'' meaning "-racer" or "-runner". The dowitcher species are: * Short-billed dowitcher, ''Limnodromus griseus'' * Long-billed dowitcher, ''Limnodromus scolopaceus'' *

Asian dowitcher The Asian dowitcher (''Limnodromus semipalmatus'') is a rare medium-large wader. Description Adults have dark legs and a long straight dark bill, somewhat shorter than that of the long-billed dowitcher. The body is brown on top and reddish under ...

, ''Limnodromus semipalmatus''

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q838747 * Bird genera