heads completely at the first shot and will often fly straight towards the guns, 
discovering their mistake in time, only to swerve to right or left, offering the 
while an excellent mark. On alighting, the frightened birds scurry up through 
the woods with wonderful agility and gaining the summits of the ridges once 
more break cover and sail away across to the opposite ridge. In this way they 
very soon outdistance the sportsman, who will shortly lose all traces of them. 
There seems to be but one representative of the grouse family in these 
provinces. Pallas’ three-toed sand grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus) is found on the 
great plains during the winter months. This bird is really an inhabitant of 
the great Mongolian Desert and Southern Siberia, but in severe winters it 
frequently seeks the slightly less bitter weather of the Chihli and Shansi 
plains. Its flight is very swift and is accompanied with a shrill whistling, 
caused by the rapid beating of the long pointed wings. The feet of this 
pretty little bird look very much like those of a rabbit, the toes being short, 
padded and covered with hairlike feathers, which are continued up the leg. 
Two varieties of pigeons may be classed with the game birds, but one of 
these, the stock dove (Columba intermedia) is practically a domesticated breed 
frequenting the habitations of man. The other, a variety of rock doye 
(C rupestris) differing from the European form in having a broad white band 
across the tail, inhabits the loess gullies and rocky ravines of the foothills. 
These two species may often be seen in vast flocks feeding together by 
hundreds on the cultivated fields, along the roads, or in the boulder-strewn 
mountain valleys. 
Two other members of the dove family also frequent the woods and 
groves, one (7urtur decaocta) inhabiting the plains, and the other, a turtle dove 
(Turtur chinensis), preferring mountainous regions. 
In certain localities the lordly bustard (Ofis dybowskit) is very common. 
Wherever large level tracts exist, be they uplands or lowlands, plateau or 
plain, there this, the prince of game birds, is to be found. The sandy 
stretches of the Ordos, the watery plain of Hsi-an Fu, the loess plateaux of 
central Shensi, and the Shansi tableland—all are equally favoured by this 
handsome bird. It does not, however, breed in these localities, but at the 
approach of summer flies northward to the solitudes of the Gobi Desert or 
Southern Siberia, where the female raises a large brood. 
We now come to the geese and ducks, a group so large that justice 
cannot be done to them in the limited space at my disposal. During the 
spring and autumn the bean goose (Anser segetum) appears in vast flocks. 
Spreading over the plains in their hundreds and thousands they resemble an 
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