80 FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KOJSKAN. 



bill and the very broad, unbroken, whitey-brown breast-band 

 at once attracted my attention and closer examination, and a 

 comparison with specimens sent me by Mr. Harting proved 

 that this bird was really a young individual of JBgialitis 

 asiatica. 



This is the first authentic instance of the occurrence of this 

 species within our limits. 



The nearly allied vereda has been once procured at the 

 Andamans (vide S. F., I., 83) ; but, so far as I know, there is no 

 reliable record of the present species having been previously 

 obtained in the British Asian empire. It will be found fully 

 described in S. F., VIL, 438. 



Dresser says : " This species inhabits Western Asia, straggling 

 rarely into the Western Palsearctic region ; and in the winter 

 season is found in Africa as far south as the Cape of Good Hope '." 

 and Harting says, after mentioning that it was first discovered 

 by Pallas about the Salt Lakes in the southern deserts of 

 Tartary : " Its usual line of migration appears to be by the 

 Red Sea shore and Abyssinia to South and South-West 

 Africa." And as SevertzofF found it breeding throughout 

 Russian Turkestan, and it has been met with on the Caspian, 

 in Palestine, on the north coast of Egypt and the Gulf of 

 Suez, we might believe that this, the western form, migrated 

 from Siberia to the Cape of Good Hope just as the larger 

 eastern form, JS. vereda, migrates from Northern China to 

 Australia. In the case of both species stragglers would be 

 dropped here and there along the route, and individuals wander 

 right and left of the route, a stray asiatica turning up at 

 Heligoland and a stray vereda at the Andamans. But it 

 would seem from what Heuglin says about meeting with this 

 species in full breeding plumage in April and May, and the 

 young in autumn in the swamps of East Kordovan, on the 

 lower portions of the White and on the Blue Nile, in the 

 beds of the rain torrents of the province of Kalabat and 

 along the shores of Lake Tana in Abyssinia, that it breeds in 

 Africa also, the mere so that he adds that it has been observed 

 in June by others. 



The migration of this species is, therefore, by no means so clear 

 and distinct as has been thought, and at present we can be by 

 no means sure whether this Ratnagiri bird is an African-bred 

 one blown over from the Red Sea, or a Siberian or Turkestan- 

 bred one, which in its migratiou to the south-west has taken 

 a easterly course. 



The present specimen is a young one, the whole plumage of 

 the upper surface narrowly fringed with pale buff or reddish 

 white. 



