CREAM-COLOURED COURSER. 241 



of Partridges which had settled on the open downs, when 

 his pointers stood at this bird ; it got up, flew about a hun- 

 dred yards, and pitched again ; he kept it in sight, and shot 

 it on the ground. The bird was sent for preservation to the 

 late Mr. Gardner, of Oxford Street, who gave the Author the 

 body, when skinned, for examination. It was a male, the 

 stomach membranaceous, the contents a dozen skins of 

 caterpillars, apparently of the Garden White Butterfly, one 

 wireworm, one small-shelled snail. Helix er'icitorum, and 

 many fragments of the hard portions of small beetles. Its 

 breast-bone is now figured. 



Mr. J. C. Mansell-Pleydell states (B. of Dorset, p. 25) 

 that, "in the year 1853, the present Lord Digby, while 

 following the hounds, observed, with the practised eye of a 

 sportsman, a strange bird on Batcombe Hill. The late Earl 

 of Ilchester next day sent his keeper Walton (still living) 

 in search of it, who killed it. The bird proved to be the 

 Cream-coloured Courser, and is in the possession of the 

 present Earl." 



In October, 1856, two were seen on Braunton Burrows in 

 North Devon, and one was shot (Zool. p. 5346) ; and two 

 are recorded by Mr. Gervase F. Mathew as having been seen 

 in the same place in March, 1860 (Zool. p. 6980). In 

 1858, on the 19th October, a female was obtained in 

 Hackney Marshes, Middlesex (Zool. p. 6309). Mr. F. S. 

 Mitchell, of Clitheroe, writes to the Editor that he has 

 examined a Courser which was shot in the autumn of 1860, 

 among a flock of Peewits, near St. Michaels-in-Wyse, Lan- 

 cashire. In October, 1864, an example, recorded and 

 acquired by the late Mr. Allis, of York, was killed at Allonby, 

 near Maryport, in Cumberland (Zool. p. 9418) ; and early 

 in the same month of the year 1866 one appears to have 

 been shot near Sandwich in Kent (Zool. s.s. p. 523).* On 

 the 8th October, 1868, a male was shot by Mr. Charles 



* With reference to that county, it may be mentioned that Mr. J. E. Harting 

 has furnished the Editor with the following note : " October 20th, 1868. Saw 

 to-day a .specimen from the sale of the Margate Museum, said to have been 

 obtained at Westbrook, near Margate, November 1849." 



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