251 
‘ESCAPES,’ 
WITH A NOTE ON THE MAGELLANIC GOOSE 
IN YORKSHIRE. 
EDGAR R. WAITE, F.L.S., 
The Museum, Leeds. 
It is occasionally very unsatisfactory to record a ‘rare occurrence,’ 
for so many birds and animals, etc., are kept in captivity, the 
chances are that such are merely escapes, and have no claim to be 
genuine records for the locality in which they were re-captured. 
Such is said to be the case with the Red-winged Starling, Belted 
Kingfisher, Passenger Pigeon, Spur-winged and Egyptian Geese, and 
several others which have from time to time been added to our 
fauna on the strength of one or two occurrences alone, only to be 
removed from the ‘ British list’ by subsequent writers. So easy is it 
to credit every rare record as an ‘escape’ that, on the other hand, 
there is the chance that a genuine occurrence may be in this way 
overlooked. In the case of a suspected escape every effort should 
be made to discover the source of the wanderer ; but, unfortunately, 
if such source is not found, it is no evidence that the bird, or what- 
ever it may be, has not travelled from some neighbouring or distant 
enclosure. 
Last year a man told me, with great gusto, that he had caught 
and killed a Seagull in Headingley, ‘ fifty miles from the sea.’ I sug- 
gested that it had been pinioned, and next day—with a somewhat 
lengthened face—he brought me a young Herring Gull, minus the 
last wing-joint. I afterwards learnt that it had been killed not more 
than one hundred yards from the garden whence it had strayed. 
On another occasion I was told that a ‘Stork’ had been caught 
at Calverley, and, wishing to know what the bird really was, I went 
over and found that the ‘Stork’ was also a young Herring Gull 
which had escaped from the garden of a friend of mine, only a few 
Streets from the place where it was picked up; but, its life having 
been fortunately preserved, it was returned to my friend unhurt. 
Last March I heard that a ‘strange bird’ had frequented a 
certain garden in Leeds for several days. On visiting the garden 
I found the bird to be an Australian Quail, its somewhat draggled 
appearance proclaiming it to be an escaped example. It had never 
left the garden, and had subsisted upon the bread thrown out for the 
Sparrows. I took it to my aviary at Headingley, and some few days 
afterwards received a message from my friend, Mr. H. Bendelack 
August 1892. 
