What group of familiar birds was once assigned to the genus Urinator–and why?

Post your answer as a comment here at The Wingbeat: The WINGS Birding Blog. The first correct answer, and the wittiest (yet still tasteful) response, will win their authors a WINGS cap, which they can wear with a pride shared by last month’s winners, Grant McCreary and Bob Behrstock.

We asked:

You encounter a flock of exactly 100 small sandpipers; careful inspection proves that they are all of the same species. On a whim, you count the toes, coming up with an absolutely accurate total of 602. What is the species?

Famously, the only small sandpiper lacking a hind toe is  Sanderling. Thus, a flock of exactly 100 birds of this species should have exactly 600 toes, three per foot.  But the hypothetical flock in our question has a total of 602. What gives?

It turns out that the rare individual Sanderling can have hind toes: the first such bird I’m aware of was reported as early as 1904 by Francis H. Allen. Thus, a flock of 100 Sanderlings, including one of these eight-toed deviants, would account for a grand total of 602 toes.

Congratulations to Grant McCreary for the first correct answer and to Bob Behrstock for making us laugh out loud with his pair o’black toes!

The next WINGS trivia question will appear in the November e-newsletter. Have a look, and maybe you’ll join Grant and Bob in keeping your head warm this winter.

Let’s stretch our mathematical muscles this month:

You encounter a flock of exactly 100 small sandpipers; careful inspection proves that they are all of the same species. On a whim, you count the toes, coming up with an absolutely accurate total of 602. What is the species?

Leave your answer as a comment below. The best correct answer and the wittiest incorrect answer will win their authors a WINGS cap.

We asked:

What is the connection between Red-winged Blackbird, Song Sparrow, and Napoleon?

We’d expected the Californians to jump on this one.

Both the Modesto Song Sparrow Melospiza melodia mailliardi and the Bicolored Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus mailliardorum are West Coast subspecies named for California’s Mailliard brothers (in the case of the sparrow, for Joseph Mailliard alone). Joseph and John were well-known collectors in the early twentieth century.

Their grandfather, Louis Mailliard, and their father, Adolphe Mailliard, both served as secretary to Joseph Bonaparte, oldest brother of Napoleon and erstwhile King of Spain.

Watch for our new trivia question–this time something mathematical–in the forthcoming October e-newsletter! The winner will earn a WINGS cap and the unbounded admiration of the worldwide birding community.

Let’s go for something historical this time:

What is the connection between Red-winged Blackbird, Song Sparrow, and Napoleon?

The winning answer will draw the connection as elegantly as possible, in the fewest possible steps–and to make it a little more challenging, the answer may not mention the  emperor’s (illegitimate) nephew Charles Lucien Bonaparte.

Leave your answer as a comment here. The best correct answer, and the wittiest incorrect answer, will win their authors a WINGS cap.

Our August question was a hard one, I thought:

Which breeding landbird of the eastern US and Canada molts its primaries in the sequence 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-10-9?

But not too hard for Grant McCreary or for this month’s winner, Dick Cannings, both of whom identified Ruby-throated Hummingbird as the species in question.

And why do ruby-throats (and other hummingbirds) shed their wing feathers in such an odd sequence? We’ll let Steve Howell, author of the new (and wonderful) Peterson Reference Guide to Molt in North American Birds answer that one:

“Because P9 is the largest and heaviest primary, precision flight might be compromised if P9 were shed first, when P10 could be quite worn. Thus replacing P10 first provides more support for the growth of P9.”

Watch for our new question in the September WINGS e-newsletter!

Last month we asked:

Which automobile manufacturer used the silhouettes of six swallows in its emblem?

The first right answer this time came from Brenda Best , who correctly identified Cadillac as the culprit. In their latest incarnation, the birds more closely resembled ducks than anything else, but in their source–the probably spurious arms of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac–they are identified as merlettes, traditionally said to represent a swallow or martin. James and Susan Dawkins referred us to a useful website, for which many thanks!

This month’s question is more strictly ornithological:

Which breeding landbird of the eastern US and Canada molts its primaries in the sequence 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-10-9?

If you know the answer, leave us a comment. As always, the first correct response, and the most interesting incorrect response, will be rewarded with a WINGS cap.

Which automobile manufacturer’s emblem included the silhouettes of six swallows?

Leave your answer as a comment on this post!

Last month, we asked:

What North American breeding bird has an English name that commemorates a site in the southeastern US and a scientific name that commemorates a site in the northwestern US?

Alexander Wilson first encountered the bird we now call Savannah Sparrow near that city in Georgia. The species had been described in 1789 by Gmelin, who named it sandwichensis for Sandwich Bay, Unalaska, Alaska, where the type was collected. I don’t know any species with a greater geographic gap between its English and its scientific names–do you?

Congratulations to our friend Dave Quady for the first correct response. He’ll soon be wearing a new WINGS cap–and you can, too, if you’re the first to answer correctly the next WINGS trivia question, set to appear in the June e-newsletter.

What do you think? Leave your answer as a comment below–the first correct answer, and the best incorrect answer, will win a WINGS cap.

What North American breeding bird has an English name that commemorates a site in the southeastern US and a scientific name that commemorates a site in the northwestern US?