234 Letters, Announcements, ^c. 



tiuued to the occiput; in the third the stripe has disappeared, 

 onlj' a few of the feathers being dusky instead of black. Thirdly, 

 because females shot in company with males of both forms are 

 identical. Fourthly, because the birds correspond in every re- 

 spect except in the colour of the top of the head*, even to the 

 yellow colouring of the interior of the mouth, which reminds one 

 forcibly of the same peculiarity in some of the Flycatchers. 



I cannot help here remarking that these birds are Flycatchers 

 in habit. I have watched them now time after time, sitting on 

 any high solitary spray of a thorny bush (the koreel, Capparis 

 spinosa, is perhaps their favourite), flitting their tails for a 

 moment or so, and then darting oflF their perch, seizing a fly and 

 returning to their post, just like a Shrike, a Flycatcher, or a 

 Roller. Often, no doubt, they darted on to an ant or tiny worm, 

 and remained an instant on the ground to devour it ; but more 

 often they caught flies and tiny beetles in the air. 



To return, it would be interesting to ascertain whether the 

 true S. leucomela of Europe and North Africa is, like S. capistrata, 

 the young of some species of which the adults have black heads. 



The sandy, half desert, treeless plains of the cis-Sutledge States 

 of the Puujaub (where I now am), between Ferozpoor and Fazilka, 

 on the Sutledge and Sirsa, Hessar and Hansie, are just the loca- 

 lities that all our Indian Saxicolae affect. One morning recently 

 I shot all the five supposed species, males and females^ within 

 the space of a square mile. 



Saxicola cenanthe, here rather rare, is one of the commonest of 

 our cold-weather visitants in the North-western Provinces. In 

 Meerut, Agra, Muttra, Etawah, and doubtless other districts they 

 abound ; but while afi^ecting waste places, like S. capistrata (vel 

 picata) and the others, with *S^. atrogularis they like waste places 

 in the neighbourhood of cultivation better, it seems to me, than 

 perfect wastes like those south of Ferozpoor. Mr. Blyth (Ibis, 

 1867, p. 14) seems to fancy that the females of S. picata and 

 S. leucuroides may have been mistaken for S. cenantJie ; but the 

 latter bird is one of the commonest in Upper India ; and though 

 it is just possible that it may differ in some trifling particulars 



* [Mr. GoiUd tells us that S. capistrata has more white on the back 

 than S, picata. — Ed.] 



