:JO-J JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATUliAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXV. 



No. VII.— THE HEIGHT AT WHICH BHIDS AKE ABLE TO FLY. 



On page 006, No. 3, Vol. XXIV of our Journal, Mr. Hankin asks for 

 information on the above point, so the following may be of interest to him. 

 A few years ago I was stalking a herd of Bhurrel {Otis nahura). The herd 

 was browsing on the hill side about 1,000 feet above me and a sentry was 

 on the look out, motionless, on a iDrojecting ledge, so it behoved me to be 

 particularly careful. I had been for sometime reclining against a rock, 

 screened from those all seeing eyes by a juniper hedge, and biding my time 

 until thej^ should move on for their midday quarters. I had been amusing 

 myself watching a flock of choughs circling over a peak straight above the 

 sheep, with a powerful pair of Zeiss glasses (12 magnification), when into 

 my vision there came, what I, at iirst, took for a white feather floating across 

 the sky. This was followed by another and still another and interested 

 me not a little. I then steadied my glasses against my knees, and my 

 head against the boulder and looked niore carefully. I then thought they 

 must be white pigeons, but could not iniderstand what pigeons could be 

 doing at such heights. When they came directly over me, 1 was able to see 

 that they were not pigeons, as 1 could just make out the slow deliberate 

 beat of the wing of some very big bird, There were five altogether and 

 they came from the direction of the plains and were passing over in a north- 

 eastevl3'^ direction. 



i could see no marking of any sort on them and they all appeared to me 

 to be pure white. The flight was that of a stork or crane. 



A few slow deliberate flaps, and then a bout of sailing on still pinions, 

 the former indulged in at very long intervals. The birds were obviously 

 migrating though rather late in the year (end of May), and assuming they 

 were storks or Siberian Cranes, i.e., birds about 10 feet or so from tip to tip, 

 at what height must they have been flying above me, to appear the size of 

 piget)as through a powerful glass, on an absolutely clear morning, in such 

 clear atmosphere Y 



I was at the time at between 14,000 and lo,000 feet above sea level. 

 They crossed the range of mountains into Spiti. 



In conclusion 1 may add that the Lammergeyer {Gjipa'ctus havhattut), the 

 Himalayan Grifl'on {Gj/ps Idnialni/ensis) and Choughs (yellow-billed) (Pijrr/io- 

 cura.r aljmms) may often be seen at 16 to 18,000 feet. 



Dhakmsala, 10th April 1917. C. H. DONALD, f.z.s. 



[Various observers have reiiarded the heights at which birds have been seen 

 In 18S0 W. E. D. Scott ijublished a note on two birds he observed thron.tih an as- 

 tronomical telescope at Prince town, U- S. A. He calculated the heiyiit the birds 

 were tiyinsi' at as bsin.u' about half a mile and he thoui^ht he could recog'nise the 

 species. Later F M. Chapman — in the " Auk" we believe — recorded some similar 

 observations in which he ^'ave the hei.uht to be from GOO ft. to 1,000 ft. and from 

 :!,nno ft. to l."),000 ft. Others have written their observations taken under similar 

 conditions but only r),40(J ft. ajipears to be tlie limit of altitude at which they have 

 observed birds in fli.yht. — Eu.s.] 



No. VIII,— THE SPAN OF LARGE BIRDS. 



On page 606 of No. 3 of Vol. XXIV of the Bombay Natural History 

 Society's Journal, Mr. Hankin asks the above question. He men- 

 tions having heard of an Adjutant, presumably LcptuptHux </u/nus which was 

 shot in India, as being 18 feet approximately. Surely this must be wrong:-* 

 1 have never measured an Adjutant but considering Blanford gives the 

 length of wing {i c, from the bend of the elbow to the tip of the longest 

 prinuiry) as only 3:2" it is hard to understand how one can possibly be 18 

 fL'Ct across. 



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