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PALLAS'S SAND-GROUSE. 



Syrrhaptes paradoxus (Pallas). 



No event in the annals of ornithology has excited more interest 

 than the irruptions of Pallas's Sand-Grouse. These, as regards the 

 British Islands, were first called to notice by a few appearances in 

 Norfolk, Carnarvonshire and Kent, in July and November 1859; 

 while several examples were obtained on the Continent during the 

 same year. In 1863 the ripples of a far larger wave of invasion 

 spread westward over Europe ; Heligoland being reached by 

 May 2ist, the date on which our first visitors of that year were shot 

 in Northumberland, out of a flock of fourteen. Next day about 

 twenty reached Staffordshire, and numbers were subsequently found 

 in many parts of the British Islands ; the majority on the eastern 

 side, from Kent to Caithness, and a few alighted in the Shetlands. 

 Inland, as well as in the south of England, occurrences were not want- 

 ing ; and, while they were less plentiful in the west, it was in Pem- 

 brokeshire that the last survivor was shot, in February 1864. One 

 bird even wandered to Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, and several 

 were killed in Ireland, some of them as far west as co. Donegal. All 



