100 MR. JOHN HANCOCK ON RECENT 
X.—WNotice of various recent Captures of Pallas’s Sand-Grouse 
(Syrrhaptes paradoxus) in Northumberland and Durham. By 
Joun Hancock. 
On the 28rd of last May I received a parcel from Wm. Reay, 
Esq., of Thropton, near Rothbury, and was no little astonished, 
on opening it, to find that it contained three fine, fresh speci- 
mens of Pallas’s Sand-Grouse,—two males and one female. 
These were shot by George Rennison, a stone mason living at 
Thropton, from whom I have the following account of their 
capture. 
He was walking, he says, through a barley field at 3 o'clock 
on the morning of Thursday, the 21st of May, when a flock of 
about fourteen birds strange to him, got up, and after a short 
flight settled again in the same field. He went behind a hedge, 
and fired at the birds sitting; he killed three. The flock then 
rose and flew off direct west. When on the wing they uttered a 
note something like that of the plover. From certain signs on 
the ground he believed the birds had roosted during the night 
in the field. 
Such is the account of what I believe to be the first capture 
of this interesting bird, out of the numerous flocks that have 
this year so unexpectedly visited almost every part of Great 
Britain. 
All the three specimens were in the moult. 
On the 2nd of June, a female was killed at Ryton, in a pea 
field, out of a flock of about sixteen. 
On the 13th of June, I saw a female specimen in a game 
dealer’s shop in Newcastle, which was picked up wounded in a 
field near Embleton; and about a fortnight after another indi- 
vidual was shot at the same place. 
On the 27th of June, I received a brace from John Dinning, 
Esq., male and female, which were shot at Ross Links, about 
the 24th. 
On the 30th of June, a male was shot, near Cowpen, out of a 
flock of about twelve. This also came into my possession. 
