CREAM-COLOURED COURSER. 243 



The true home of the Cream-coloured Courser commences 

 at the Canary Islands in the west, where Dr. C. Bolle 

 found it tolerably common, and, upon the arid plains, even 

 numerous. In Morocco, according to the late M. Favier of 

 Tangier, whose interesting notes are published by Col. 

 Irby,* individuals appear annually during July on some 

 plains not far from Tangier : the duration of their stay and 

 their numbers varying with the abundance of insect food 

 and with the temperature, and they leave in August or Sep- 

 tember. They doubtless retire to a warmer climate, for 

 Canon Tristram only once saw them during the winters of 

 1856-57 in the Algerian Sahara, as far south as 30° — 31° 

 N. lat. ; but in the summer of 1856, and towards the end of 

 June, 1857, they were observed in small flocks on the elevated 

 table-lands about Biskra, Batna, Constantino, and Laghouat. 

 In Egypt this species does not appear to be common : at 

 least not in winter; Von Heuglin found it resident in 

 Arabia Petrea, the coasts of the Ked Sea, and Kordofan ; 

 Mr. Blanford obtained it in Persia and in Baluchistan ; and 

 thence it occurs through Sind and the north and western 

 districts of the Punjab, where Mr, Hume found it breeding. 

 The egg of the Cream-coloured Courser was figured by 

 the late "W. C. Hewitson (Ibis, 1859, pi. ii. fig. 3) from a 

 specimen brought from Algeria by Canon Tristram, who 

 contributed notes to the effect that it was taken, with two 

 others, by the keeper of the caravansary of Ain Oosera in 

 the Western Sahara, who said that the eggs were deposited 

 in the bare soil in the most arid plains, and that the com- 

 plement usually consisted of three. Viera, however, told Bolle 

 that in the Canaries only two were deposited ; Favier be- 

 lieved that two was the usual number ; and in India neither 

 Mr. Hume nor his collectors appear to have found more in 

 the same clutch. North African eggs are generally of a 

 broad oval shape, of a stone-buff ground colour, marbled 

 with purplish-grey under-shell markings and brown surface 

 blotches : the one figured by Hewitson measures 1*3 by 

 1*08 in. Mr. Hume, who has obtained a large series in 



* Cm. Str. Gibraltar, pp. 155-158. 



