Orus leucogeranus. 41 



Observed in the British Isles," some elongated and pointed breast feathers 

 are represented, such as do exist in Qrus paradisea ; but there is not a trace 

 of them in Q. leucogeranus. In these figures the bill as well as the forehead 

 are also erroneously represented of a bright yellow. 



Mr. Hume's entire account of this bird is too long for citation in full, but 

 there is no better to quote from, so that we must needs have further recourse 

 to it. " Sixteen years," he wrote in 1867, " have now elapsed since first I shot 

 one in Ladakh (in the Himalaya). This was in October; and the birds 

 were doubtless then on their way to India. . . . Tears passed away, 

 and I never once met with a single specimen. Soon after the mutiny, 

 however, in 1859, I succeeded in shooting one out of a flock of some five- 

 and-twenty, which I found in a large jheel or shallow rain-water lake, about 

 half-way been Agra and Oawnpore. During the winters of 1865-6 and 

 1866-7 I procured and preserved a number of specimens in the same 

 neighbourhood, and have had many opportunities of watching them pretty 

 closely." 



They are very probably to be found during the cold weather in suitable localities 

 throughout the plains of the north of India ; but the only place where I have observed 

 them, out of the Himalaya, is in a tract of country lying to the north of the Etawah, 

 and south of the Mynpooree districts, in the middle of jthe Duab, or Mesopotamia, of the 

 Ganges and Jumna, and, as I said before, about half-way between Agra and Oawnpore. 

 That they themselves are rare, and that localities suited to their tastes are not 

 numerous, may be inferred from the fact that, apparently. Dr. Jerdon, when he 

 published his work, had never seen one; while, as far as I know, until I last year sent 

 a pair to Madras, there were no specimens in any of our [Indian] museums. The 

 locality in which, during these last two winters, I have seen and procured, compara- 

 tively, so many of these beautiful birds is somewhat peculiar. A broad sBraggling belt 

 of dhaJe (Buiea frondosa) jungle, some ten miles in width— at one time doubtless 

 continuous, but now much encroached upon, and intersected in many places by 

 cultivated lands — runs down through nearly the whole of the Duab, marking, I suspect, 

 an ancient river course. Just where the northern and southern boundaries of the 

 Etawah and Mynpooree districts lie within this belt, the latter incloses a number of 

 large shallow ponds or lakes (" jheels " as we here term them), which, covering from 

 two hundred acres to many square miles of country each at the close of the rainy season, 

 are many of them still somewhat imposing sheets of water early in January, and some 

 few of them of considerable extent even as late as the commencement of March. . . . 

 Many of them abound with rushes and sedges, and as the waters gradually dry up, or 

 are drawn off for irrigating purposes, become successively the favourite haunts of the 

 White Crane. 



There will always be at any particular time two or three " jheels " that for the 

 moment they particularly affect, and these are, as a rule, just those that then happen to 

 average about 18in. to 2ft. in depth, and that have a great deal of rush {Sdrpus 

 carvnatus amongst others) somewhere in the shallower parts. 



To this tract of country they make their way as early as the 25th October (and 

 possibly sooner, though this is the earliest date on which I have observed them) ; and 

 there they remain at least as late as the end of March, or perhaps a week or two longer. 

 During the whole of our cold season they stay in this neighbourhood, and, though 

 growing more and more wary (if possible) each time they are fired at, and disappearing 

 for a day or two from any jheel where an attempt has been made to kill or capture them, 



G 



