450 THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 



Courser Cursor. This genus embraces ten species, of which 

 only one has found a place and that merely as an accidental 

 visitant in the European avifauna, and has occurred in Heligo- 

 land. 



250. Cream-coloured Courser [ISABELLFARBIGER LAUFER]. 

 CURSOR EUROP^US, Latham. 1 



Cursor europceus. Naumann, vii. 77. 



Gream-coloured Courser. Dresser, vii. 425, 



Coure-vite isabelle. Temminck, Manuel, ii. 513, iv. 345. 



Reymers on one occasion in 1835 or 1836 obtained this in- 

 teresting stranger in Heligoland. This bird, like many another 

 rarity, was at the time sold and went to Hamburg, and it is pro- 

 bably on this example that Droste-Hlilshoff (Vo'gel Borkwms) bases 

 his statement of its occurrence in this island. Unfortunately, I did 

 not succeed in recovering the specimen in question, which is the 

 more annoying, as no other example has been either seen or killed 

 here, though it has occurred twenty-one times in England since 

 that time. 



We can only account for the extremely frequent occurrence in 

 England of so southern a stranger by again assuming that we 

 are dealing with individuals which have resumed the northerly 

 course of their spring migration from their breeding-places in the 

 west of Africa, after having lost their spouses ; and that, not meet- 

 ing with districts similar in character to their desert home, they 

 have reached England by a northerly course vid Spain. Favier 

 (Irby, Om. of Gibraltar) says that these birds appear annually in 

 fairly large numbers in the neighbourhood of Tangier, while in 

 Malta and Sicily they occur more as stragglers during the spring. 

 These cases may probably also be traced back to a similar cause. 



The breeding area of this species extends from the Canary 

 Islands through North Africa and South Asia. 



Crane Grus. The continent of Europe possesses but one 

 species of this genus which, however, is represented more numer- 

 ously in other parts of the world, notably in Asia. In Heligoland 

 two species only have occurred viz. the European form, an 

 example of which was once seen but not killed, and many years 

 ago, the beautiful Demoiselle Crane (Grus virgo) from the south, 

 the bird on this occasion being shot. 



1 Cursorius gcUlicus (Gmel.). 



