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[First paragraph …] A “Sandpiper” was among the many birds killed by a surveying party in Dusky Sound in southern New Zealand on 16 April 1773 during Lieutenant James Cook’s sojourn there in the course of his second (1772-1775) voyage (Forster in Hoare 1982: 256). This “Sandpiper” is likely to be the specimen that Johann Reinhold Forster, the official naturalist on the voyage, described as Charadrius torquatula (Forster 1772-1775: II: 18v,19r). His description was dated 17 April 1773, and that the bird inhabited “portu obscuro” (= Dusky Sound). Forster’s detailed manuscript description in Latin was edited and published later by Lichtenstein (1844: 108-109) who, however, omitted Forster’s date of description. What was almost certainly the same specimen was drawn by Forster’s son, George, the assistant naturalist and natural history draughtsman on the voyage. George Forster’s undated painting, folio 121, is now in The Natural History Museum, London (Lysaght 1959: 301). The original painting has never been published, but it can be viewed online at http://piclib. nhm. ac. uk. Forster’s description and the younger Forster’s painting are of an adult male shore plover Thinornis novaeseelandiae (Gmelin, 1789).  Neither of the Forsters recorded taking any specimens of the new species back to England.