OT1DID.1-:. 



51. 





MACQUEEN'S BUSTARD. 

 Otis macqueeni, J. E. Gray. 



This species, which might with advantage be called the Asiatic 

 Ruffed Bustard, occasionally wanders across Europe, and in October 

 1847 3 bird — now in the Museum of the Philosophical Society at 

 York — was shot by Mr. G. Hunsley in a stubble-field near Kirton- 

 inT^ndsey, Lincolnshire. This is the only instance of its occurrence 

 in the British Islands down to the present time. 



It is tolerably certain that the five Ruffed iJustards recorded 

 from Northern Germany between the years i8oo and 1847 were all 

 examples of O. maapiceni, and not of its closely-allied African re- 

 presentative, O. iiudidata : the existence of two distinct species being 

 unknown to Naumann and others. A genuine Macqueen's Bustard, 

 killed near Utrecht in December 1850, is in the Museum at Leiden, 

 while three specimens have been obtained in Belgium, one on the 

 Swedish island of Ocland, one (out of a flock of six) in Schleswig, 



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