Family CHARADRIID^. Genus Glareola. 



Subfamily Charadriin^e. 



COMMON PRATINCOLE. 



GLAREOLA PRATINCOLA— (Z/««^«.r). 



Geographical Distribution. — British .- Rare visitor in 

 spring and autumn ; individuals, doubtless, that have overshot the 

 mark in spring whilst on their way to their breeding grounds in 

 Spain or the Balearic Islands, or in autumn have wandered west- 

 wards with the tide of migrants from the east. First noticed by 

 ornithologists in 1807, when examples were obtained almost 

 simultaneously in Lancashire and Cumberland. Since this date 

 it has been captured in the following counties : Yorkshire (3 

 examples), Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk (4 examples), 

 Wilts, Hants, Surrey, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. 

 A Pratincole was observed, but not obtained, in Breconshire; 

 another was shot, but not preserved, half a century ago, in Co. 

 Cork, so that it is impossible to say whether the bird was rightly 

 identified. A solitary example hails from Scotland, killed on 

 Unst, one of the Shetland group. Foreign : Southern and 

 western Palsearctic region in summer; Ethiopian region, and 

 accidentally in parts of Oriental region, in winter. Breeds in the 

 basin of the Mediterranean, and in Spain and Trance, as also in 

 the lower valley of the Danube. North of these hmits, in the 

 extreme north of France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and 

 Germany, it is as accidental as in the British Islands. Eastwards 

 it is a summer visitor to the basins of the Black, Caspian, and 

 Aral Seas, the salt lakes of Russian Turkestan as far as Ala-Kul, 

 on the frontiers of Mongolia, and southwards to Persia and 

 Palestine. The birds that breed in Europe and North Africa 

 winter in that continent south of the Great Desert in Senegal, 



