Description
The holotype of the Long-legged Bunting is a partial skeleton. Seven other associated skeletons were found. The bones are held at the University of La Laguna, in Tenerife, Spain. This species was distinguishable from other buntings as it was larger than existing Emberiza species and had longer legs, shorter wings, and a differently-shaped bill. These features indicate that the Long-legged Bunting was a ground dweller and likely flightless. This makes it one of the few known flightless Passerines known, the others being the Stephens Island Wren (Xenicus lyalli) and the Long-billed Wren (Dendroscansor decurvirostris). Both of these wrens are extinct. This bunting probably was omnivorous, like the other species in its genus. It likely ate seeds and invertebrates. However, because of its differently-shaped bill, harder seeds could have been included in its diet.
Read more about this topic: Long-legged Bunting
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)