126 THE BIRDS OP OXFORDSHIRE. 



showing above ground) on tlie top of Harcourt Hill, near 

 Swyncombe, where they were seen by Mr. Newton, in flocks 

 of from five to six- or seven-and-twenty, during the months 

 of May and June and as late as the first week in July. The 

 ground they frequented was very bare and of a dry sandy 

 nature, and the birds were extremely wary. A male and 

 female were secured on the 22nd May; the female contained 

 a number of eggs, some of which, in the opinion of Mr. J. 

 Gardner, of Oxford Street, would have been laid in a few 

 days ; but no eggs are known to have been actually deposited 

 in this locality. 



Mr. W. Padbury King, writing from Lower Heyford to 

 the Standard for the 5th September, stated that the Sand- 

 Grouse had been there since early spring. The first that 

 were noticed were a flock of fourteen which were seen by 

 Mr. King^s shepherds, but he himself did not see any until 

 the date of his letter, the 3rd September. He writes — ' I saw 

 them fly swiftly over my head, with a sharp continual cry 

 like tack, tack, tack. They were a mottled colour of bay and 

 grey, with marvellously pointed ^vings.' In reply to my 

 enquiries, Mr. King kindly wrote me word that they were 

 first seen on the 1 2th May, and frequented the light stone- 

 brash land on the higher ground, taking long flights over the 

 Cherwell valley (where they had never been seen to settle) to 

 the ploughed fields at Rousham, also on the stone-brash. In 

 September they w^ere fomid in a tm'nip field. On the 25th 

 October, Mr. King wrote to me that the Sand-Grouse had not 

 been seen for a fortnight, and had not bred there, confirming 

 the author's conviction that these desert-loving birds would 

 gradually disappear from this county at the approach of 

 wdnter, being unfitted to withstand the cold combined with 

 the damp of our autumn and winter climate. 



On the high ground near Fyfield, to the north of Burford, 

 a flock of nine were seen early in July, by an old gamekeeper, 

 who got within twenty yards of them, and described them as 



