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ON THE OOOURRENOE 



OF PORPHYRIO SMARAGDONOTUS TEMM. 



By col. H. M. DRUMMOND HAY, C.M.Z S. 



IT may be interesting to record the fact of Forphyrio 

 sniaragdonotus Temm. (P. chloroiiotus Breiim.) having 

 been shot on the Tay last autumn by a young man resident in 

 the village of Errol, who tells me that about the 15th September, 

 while shooting wild-ducks by moonlight on the banks of the 

 Tay, between Errol and Seaside, he was watching at the end of 

 one of the stone dykes which stretch far out into the river, 

 when his dog, which was poking about among the high reeds, 

 started a bird which flew past him, and which he fortunately 

 shot. Some little time afterwards the bird was shown to me, it 

 having then been skinned and mounted. From the description I 

 had previously got of it, I beUeved that the bird would turn out to 

 be Porphyrio hyacinthus (Temm.) (P. veterum GmL), an 

 occasional straggler to this country ; it having been, I believe, 

 noticed more than once in England, while one is recorded by Mr. 

 R. Gray in his "Birds of the West of Scotland" p. 337, as having 

 been shot near Campbeltown, Argyleshire, in September 1876. 

 Porphyrio hyacinthus I am well acquainted with, having so often 

 seen it in Sicily, where it frequents the marshes in the neighbour- 

 hood both of Catania and Syracuse ; but to my great surprise 

 the bird brought to me proved to be Porphyrio smaras^donofus, 

 which I believ.e to be more an eastern species than the former,"^ 



* Porphyria hyacinthus is mentioned by Temminck and other authors as 

 inhabiting the Ionian Islands, Greece and Turkey. Having been for 

 some years resident in the Ionian Islands, and through most parts of Greece 

 and Turkey, I may state, that though frequently searched for, I have never 

 seen it east of Sicily. 



