742 Mr. D. A. Bannermau on the [Ibis, 



An Occasional Visitor in the western islands; more fre- 

 qnent in tiie eastern islands. 



The aboA'e summarizes the conclusions arrived at by 

 Mr. Meade-Waldo twenty-five years ago (IbiS; 1893, p. 205), 

 to which I have little to add. I am quite unable to detei'- 

 mine the correct status o£ the Curlew in the Canary Islands. 



I have never seen the Curlew in Gran Canaria and only 

 met with it twice during my expedition to the Eastern 

 Group, once on theToston reefs in the second week of May 

 (Ibis, 191 J', p. 46), and again on Graciosa I fluslied four 

 birds early in June (Ibis, 1914, p. 72). 



Polalzek does not appear to have seen it at all, as he 

 simply quotes Cabrera's note (Orn. Jahrb. 1909, p. 21) to the 

 effect that the Curlew is met with accidentally in the 

 Canaries and is more common in Fuerteventura and Lan- 

 zarote, though he had in his collection a specimen obtained 

 in spring in Tenerife (Catalogo, p. 57). 



Von Thanner watched a pair in Tetierife from the 

 14th of June, 1904, for several days (Orn. Jahrb. 1905, 

 p. 212), and this ornithologist believed that he had estab- 

 lislied the Curlew as a breeding bird in Fuerteventura 

 (Orn. Jahrb. 1908, p. 213). His evidence was not by any 

 means satisfactory and rested on the fact that a broken egg 

 — believed to belong to the species — had been found in the 

 Matas Blaucas in southern Fuerteventura by a Spaniard 

 living there, who showed the broken egg-shell to von 

 Thanner. If Herr von Thanner can supply further un- 

 mistakable evidence that the Curlew does breed in the 

 Canary Islands, he will have made a discovery of consider- 

 able interest. From Polatzek's remarks (Orn. Jahrb. 1909, 

 p. 21) it seems that this ornitliologist doubted whether the 

 broken egg-shell shown to von Thanner was that oi' N.phceopus 

 or N. a. arquata. 



From the above notes it will be seen that very little is 

 known about the Curlew in these islands. If it is a regular 

 winter visitor it would assuredly have been noticed by 

 Polatzek, who spent three years in the Archipelago. If a 

 Bird of Passage, then what are birds doing so late as the 



