[2] The white-bellied seedsnipe was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1772, in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected on the Falkland Islands.

[3] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.

[4] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name, but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Tetrao malouinus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.

Males' upperparts and breast have an intricate scallop pattern of buff, cinnamon, and black; their chin and belly are white.

[8] The white-bellied seedsnipe is found from southern Chile's Magallanes Region and west-central Argentina's Río Negro Province south through Tierra del Fuego to islands off Cape Horn.

[9] In the breeding season it inhabits windswept ridges and moorland characterized by crowberry heath (Empetrum rubrum) and cushion plants.