"bill". Likewise, German naturalist Johannes Gistel proposed the name "Timeta" to replace "Leptorhynchus" in 1848. John Gould had described the banded stilt as "Himantopus palmatus" in 1837, but recorded it as "Cladorhynchus pectoralis" in his 1865 work "Handbook to the Birds of Australia". Gould also wrote that its distribution was unclear after it was first recorded at Rottnest Island though not elsewhere in Western Australia, and later in South Australia, until large numbers were seen by the British explorer Charles Sturt at Lepson's Lake north of Cooper Creek in what is now western Queensland. German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach placed it in a new genus, naming it "Xiphidiorhynchus pectoralis" in 1845. Australian ornithologist Fred Lawson gave it the name "Cladorhynchus australis" in 1904. Gregory Mathews in his 1913 "List of the Birds of Australia" synonymised all subsequent genus and species names, using "Cladorhynchus australis". He listed his subspecies "rottnesti" from 1913, though this has not been recognised since. Both Joseph G. Strauch in a 1978 study and Philip C. Chu in a 1995 re-analysis of bone and muscle characters found that the banded stilt was sister taxon to the avocets, with the stilts of the genus "Himantopus" an earlier offshoot. A 2004 study combining genetics and morphology reinforced its position as sister to the avocet lineage.