Snowy Sheathbill

About the Snowy Sheathbill

The snowy sheathbill (Chionis albus), also known as the greater sheathbill, pale-faced sheathbill, and paddy, is one of two species of sheathbill. It is usually found on the ground. It is the only land bird native to the Antarctic continent.

The snowy sheathbill was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it in a new genus Vaginalis and coined the binomial name Vaginalis alba. Gmelin based his description on the "white sheath-bill" that had been described and illustrated in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham

in his A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham erroneously believed that the bird was found in New Zealand. The type locality was designated as the Falkland Islands by Baron Bradford and Charles Chubb in 1912. The snowy sheathbill is now placed in the genus Chionis that was introduced in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster. The genus name is from the Ancient Greek khiōn meaning snow. The specific epithet albus is Latin meaning "white". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

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