420 BRITISH BIRDS. 



Turkestan migrate to West Turkestan in winter, occasionally straying as 

 far as the Kirghiz steppes, between the Volga and the Ural rivers. In 

 mild seasons the birds breeding in Dauria winter in the northern borders 

 of the desert of Gobi, in Mongolia, where a few remain to breed, but in 

 severe seasons migrate south of this desert and sometimes reach North 

 China. 



The interest attaching to Pallas's Sand-Grouse in the eyes of the British 

 ornithologist rivals that with which the Bohemian Waxwing is regarded. 

 Both species have visited our islands in great numbers ; but the Waxwing 

 always appears in autumn, whereas the Sand-Grouse chooses spring for its 

 visits. The Waxwings are driven from their usual winter-quarters by 

 exceptionally heavy falls of snow, which bury their food-supply j whilst we 

 may imagine that the Sand-Grouse, impelled to migrate by their hereditary 

 instincts to the summer home of their youth, are sometimes forced in late 

 and stormy springs either to breed in their winter- quarters or to seek new 

 breeding-grounds in milder climates. It is possible, however, that the 

 remarkable visits of the Sand-Grouse to Western Europe may have been 

 only the result of blunders in the direction of migration j but the dates of 

 their visits suggest the idea that they had visited or attempted to visit their 

 usual breeding-grounds, and, finding their progress eastwards barred by 

 cold or snow, had changed their course. Most of the recorded visits of 

 these birds to Europe are in May, and the great invasion in 1863 reached 

 our shores during the last half of May ; but Radde says that they usually 

 arrive at their breeding-grounds at Tarei-Nor*, in the extreme south of 

 Siberia, before the end of March. On the day that the first flock arrived 

 he states that the thermometer only reached 37° at midday, and went down 

 to 2i° (nearly 30° below freezing-point !) at night. He found eggs in the 

 middle of April, and saw young birds in the middle of May. They make 

 no nest, but merely scratch a shallow hollow, about 5 inches across, in the 

 salt-impregnated soil, though in some cases a little grass or a few sprigs of 

 a saline plant are placed round the margin. Three is the usual number 

 of eggs, though it is said that four are occasionally found. They are 

 remarkably elongated in shape and are scarcely at all pyriform, in this 

 respect resembling the eggs of the Pigeons. In their colour, which is 

 strictly protective, they resemble much more the eggs of the Plovers, 

 especially the Ring-Plovers. The ground-colour varies from olive-buff to 

 brownish buff, the latter being the most common. They are generally 

 pretty evenly, but not very profusely, spotted with overlying markings of 

 dark brown, and with paler and greyer underlying markings ; these spots 



* Tarei-Nor, or the lake of Tarei, is situated in the middle of the steppe of Kerbon, 

 which Mes due south of Nertchinsk, a town famous (or, rather, infamous) as the centre of 

 the gold- and silver-mines in which the poor Russian exiles are condemned to work. 



