520 CREAM-COLOURED COURSER. 



As a straggler this species has once occurred in Holland, three 

 or four times in Northern and Central Germany, and to about the 

 same extent in France. Even to the south of the latter, as well as 

 to Spain and the mainland of Italy, its visits are rare and irregular, 

 though somewhat more frequent in Sicily and Malta ; in Bulgaria 

 and the Dobrudscha it is unknown, and it is only a wanderer to the 

 steppes of South Russia. In the west its true home commences at 

 the Canary Islands, on some of which, especially Fuerteventura, the 

 bird is fairly numerous ; while eastward it inhabits Africa north of 

 the Sahara — where Canon Tristram obtained the first eggs on record, 

 and southward it is found in Kordofan, as well as on both sides of 

 the Red Sea. Through Arabia we follow it to Persia, Baluchistan, 

 Northern India and Afghanistan ; but birds found within the 

 fluctuating Russian frontier near the Murgab have been separated 

 by M. Zaroudnoi as var. hogohtbovi. Other members of the genus 

 inhabit portions of Asia and Africa ; that most closely allied to the 

 present SDecies being a native of Somali-land. 



In the Canaries Mr, Meade- Waldo obtained young birds by March 

 23rd, on the barest parts of the desert, where the stones were mostly 

 small ; but in India the laying-season varies from March to August, 

 according to the time of the rains. Most of the eggs in European 

 collections are the produce of a bird which was brought to Favier 

 of Tangiers in 1851 and laid them at irregular intervals until 1859; 

 their colour is stone-buff, marbled with purplish-grey and blotched 

 with brown : measurements of one obtained by Canon Tristram i"3 

 by I "08 in. Mr. Hume says that those in his large series from the 

 Punjab are rather smaller and darker ; his experience and that of 

 other observers is that 2 form the clutch. The food consists of 

 insects and small molluscs. The note emitted by the female is 

 syllabled by Favier as rererer. 



The adult has the beak dark brown ; irides hazel ; forehead and 

 crown of a sandy-buff, turning to grey and deepening to slate-blue 

 margined with black on the nape ; from the eye to the nape a white 

 streak, with a narrow black stripe below ; upper surface generally 

 sandy-buff; quills, under wing-coverts and axillaries black ; under 

 parts pale greyish-buff, gradually passing into white at the vent ; legs 

 greyish. The sexes are alike in plumage. Length 10 in. ; wing 6 in. 

 The young bird (in the background) is more rufous in tint, and has 

 no grey or black on the nape, while the eye-stripe is buff instead 

 of white ; the feathers of the throat and the upper parts have dark 

 crescentic markings. 



