The Cream-Coloured Courser. ^■^ 



p. 245) states that the fully adult dress is not assumed till the end of the second 

 year. 



Nestling (Fuerteventura, 24, 3, 1888, taken by Mr. Meade-Waldo, who kindly 

 lent me the skin to describe), is sandy, whiter on the throat and chin, and mottled 

 above with two shades of brown. The bill and feet look as if they had been 

 yellowish-brown when fresh. 



" There is really no nest, the bigger stones being just moved away to make 

 room for the bird to sit on the two eggs" (Meade- Waldo, "Ibis," 1889, p. 505). 

 The eggs are usually two in number, and are laid, as in the Pratincoles and 

 Terns, side by side. Their ground colour is pale stone-buff, without miy gloss, 

 minutely freckled and scribbled with pale blue-grey and umber- brown, some being 

 much more thickly marked than others. (I have taken this description from two 

 sets in my own collection from Fuerteventura). At a short distance they look 

 extremely like water-worn pebbles, and we can readily believe the statement of 

 those who have found them, that they are particularly difficult to discover. It is 

 noteworthy, in view of the number of eggs which constitutes a full laying in a 

 state of nature, that a female Courser, kept in captivity by Favier, in Algeria, 

 laid, one year, eight unfertile eggs, and twelve the next year ! At the nest the 

 female alone is in attendance upon the eggs, and does not assist the would-be 

 discoverer either by flying from the nest, or by exhibiting any anxiety. When 

 the young are hatched, however, both parents are in attendance. It has been 

 mentioned that the fully adult plumage is not put on until the second auttimn ; 

 young males, however, not unfrequently breed before then in immature dress. Dr. 

 Tristram took the first undoubted, eggs of this bird on the fringe of the Algerian 

 Sahara (" Ibis," 1859, p. 79). In the Canaries the eggs are laid by the end of 

 March, but in India the time appears to vary from March to August, depending 

 upon the time of the rainy season. The eggs measure about if by i/o inch, but 

 vary a good deal in size. 



The Courser is not a bird of extensive and regular migrations. In our 

 country, as mentioned above, they usually appear at the beginning of winter. In 

 Malta chiefly in March, April, and May (Wright). In the Algerian Sahara they 

 are less abundant in winter than in summer (Tristram) ; and other observers in 

 Algeria and Morocco have had much the same experience. In Egypt they appear 

 to be resident (Shelley) ; also in India (Hume, " Stray Feathers," i, 228), though 

 Adam, writing of the Sambhur Lake, states that it (the Courser) leaves in the 

 hot weather to breed elsewhere. If the reader can deduce a law of migration that 

 will ease his mind from the above facts, and any others he may come across, he 

 is at perfect liberty to do so. Probably the only definite law about the whole 



