454 THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 



the bird is distributed through Germany, central and southern 

 Russia, as far as China, its nesting quarters extending southwards 

 down to Palestine and Persia. 



It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce that, during 

 the present year (1889), my collection has been enriched by a 

 specimen of this species, which was shot here on the 23rd of May, 

 the bird in question being a female. 



254A. White Spoonbill [WEISSER LOFFLER]. 

 PLATALEA LEUCORODIA, Linn. 



Platalea leucorodius. Naumann, ix. 312. 



Spoonbill. Dresser, vi. 319. 



Spatula blanche. Temminck, Manuel, ii. 595, iv. 387. 



It appears strange that a species like the present, whose area 

 of distribution extends from Portugal to Japan, and which is found 

 breeding so far north as southern Holland, should form an addition 

 to the remarkable list of the birds of Heligoland the more so, as 

 it is impossible to see what could attract or attach a typical marsh- 

 bird like the present species to the rocky walls and shingly beach 

 of an island like Heligoland. The same fact explains also the 

 rarity, and extreme paucity in numbers, in which its more or less 

 closely related species, with the exception of the Heron, have 

 visited this island. 



Until the end of the seventeenth century the Spoonbill was 

 found breeding in England, since which time, however, the draining 

 of its breeding places has compelled it, like many other Waders, to 

 seek another home. 



In Europe, Holland may for the present be regarded as the 

 most northern limit of the breeding stations of this species. Those 

 which are most numerously occupied are situated in Hungary and 

 in the valley of the Lower Danube. 



Heron Ardea. This genus is distributed in a rich variety of 

 forms over the whole earth, but is very poorly represented in 

 Heligoland ; even the Common Heron only occurs in very isolated 

 instances, and of each of three other European species only one 

 example has occurred in Heligoland during a long lifetime. Eng- 

 land, on the other hand, not only has a record of nine European 

 species, but an American form, Ardea lentiginosa, has been observed 

 there on no less than eighteen occasions. The latter fact, with 

 which may be associated many other similar ones, can hardly leave 



