Object Status:
Extant
Accession Date:
By 1799
Notes:
Peale wrote to Samuel Latham Mitchill (1764-1831) on 26 July 1803: “I don’t know whether the Plover which you call Frost bird of long Island, is found in the neighbourhood of this City. Those I have got are of a different colour from the Charadrius pluvialis. And I have called ours the Bullhead plover. The upper parts cenerious speckled with white— wing quills brown with white shafts, the under part of the body white” (Miller 1988: 586, Selected Papers, Vol. 2, part 1, Yale University Press). Peale had probably recently seen a paper published by Mitchill’s brother in The Medical Repository (1803), which included the “Grey plover, or frost-bird” among a list of birds of Long Island (Murphy 1962, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 106: 48-52).
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Black-bellied Plover
Current Scientific Name
Charadriidae | Pluvialis squatarola
