372 STRUTHIONID.E. 



The Little Bustard can only be considered an acci- 

 dental, and generally, a winter visiter to this country ; the 

 male has never been killed here in the plumage assumed 

 during the breeding season, that I am aware of; nor has the 

 nest, or the eggs been found ; and most of the specimens, 

 of which many are recorded, some of them males, have 

 occurred in the winter half year, — that is, from the middle of 

 autumn to the middle of spring, both sexes, during that 

 period, wearing the same livery. 



Mr. Thompson, of Belfast, has stated that two birds of 

 this rare species were seen in the county of Wicklow on the 

 28rd of Ai;gust 1833, and one of them was shot by Mr. 

 Reside, for whom it was set up by Mr. W. S. Wall, bird- 

 preserver, Dublin. Mr. Couch mentions that two or three 

 specimens have occurred in Cornwall, one of which he has 

 seen. Three instances are also recorded of the appearance of 

 this bird in Devonshire, and a fourth was obtained so lately 

 as the 1.5th of November 1839. The Earl of Malmesbury 

 has in his collection a female specimen killed at Heron Court, 

 near Christchurch, Hants. To F. Holme, Esq. I am in- 

 debted for the knowledge of a specimen that was shot on 

 Denton Common in Oxfordshire, in December 1833. One 

 was killed at Chatham, in Kent, in January 1834. Three 

 specimens have been obtained in Essex, one of which, a 

 female, killed at Harwich in January 1823, is in my own 

 collection ; a second was killed at Little Clacton in the 

 winter of 1824, and a third very recently near Chelmsford, 

 for the knowledge of the occurrence of which I am indebted 

 to Mr. G. Meggy. This species has been killed in Suffolk, 

 in Cambridgeshire, and several times in Norfolk, one exam- 

 ple of which was in the collection of the late Mr. Sparshall 

 of Norwich. In October 1839, two Little Bustards were 

 seen near Birmingham, as I learn from D. W. Crompton, 

 Esq. and one of the two was killed. Very early in the same 



