LITTLE BUSTARD. 453 



THE LITTLE BUSTARD can only be considered an acci- 

 dental, and, generally, a winter visitor 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 speci- 

 mens, 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 

 23rd of August, 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 on 

 the 15th 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 indebted 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 1 824, 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 example 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 



