DEMOISELLE CRANE. 575 



GRUS VIRGO. 

 DEMOISELLE CRANE. 



(PLATE 36.) 



Ciconia grus numidica, Briss. Om. v. p. 388 (1760). 



Ardea virgo, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 234 (1766) ; et auctorum plurimorum 



Latham, (Temminck), (Naumanri), (Bonaparte), (Degland fy Gerbe), (Dresser), 



&c. 



Anthropoides virgo (Linn.), VieHl. N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. ii. p. 163 (1816). 

 Grus virgo (Linn.), Pall. Zoogr. Rosso-Asiat. ii. p. 108 (1826). 

 Scops virgo (Linn.}, Gray, List Gen. S. p. 86 (1841). 



The Numidian or Demoiselle Crane must be regarded as a very rare 

 accidental visitor to the British Islands, as a pair were seen on one of the 

 Orkney Islands on the 14th of May, 1863, and one of them, which proved 

 to be a male, was shot (Saxby, 'Zoologist/ 1863, p. 8692). The reported 

 occurrence of this bird in Somersetshire in 1876 ( ( Science Gossip/ 1876, 

 p. 66) rests upon very unsatisfactory evidence (Cecil Smith, ( Zoologist/ 

 1883, p. 333). 



The summer range of the Demoiselle Crane is very extensive, but the 

 bird is only locally distributed. It nests in the scattered marshes of 

 Algeria, but does not appear to be met with in Europe during the breeding- 

 season, except in Southern Spain, in the lagoons on the western shores of 

 the Black Sea, and in the steppes of Southern Russia between lat. 50 and 

 the Caucasus. It breeds throughout Turkestan and in South-west Siberia, 

 at least as far north as lat. 46. In Central Siberia it breeds near Lake 

 Baikal as far north as lat. 53, and is common in summer in Dauria and 

 in Eastern Mongolia, as far as the extreme north-west of China proper. 

 The Asiatic birds appear to winter in the plains of India. On migration, 

 or as an accidental straggler, it has been seen in various parts of Europe 

 in Scandinavia, Heligoland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece, and 

 Asia Minor. In autumn it passes up the valley of the Nile in enormous 

 numbers, and winters in Sennar as far south as lat. 12*. 



* The evidence of the occurrence of this species in Africa south of the Equator is very 

 doubtful. Dresser, in his ' Birds of Europe,' quotes Natal as a locality, on the authority 

 of Messrs. Woodward ('Zoologist,' 1875, p. 4510). These gentlemen describe it as 

 breeding in that country and as being the commonest Crane, known locally as the ' Kafir 

 Crane." There can be little doubt that the bird referred to is Grus regulvrum, which 

 Mr. Ayres found breeding in the Transvaal, though the description does not quite agree. 

 This species is doubtless the one which Livingstone met with on the Zambesi, also 

 mentioned by Dresser as Grits virgo (Kirk, ' Ibis,' 1864, p. 331). 



