Syrrhaptes tibetanus, Gould. 



Vernacular Names.— [Kuk, Ladak.] 



T is in the semi-desert Alpine tracts of Ladak and 

 the upper portions of the Sutlej valley alone that 

 this splendid species (so far as is yet known) occurs 

 within our limits. I have seen numbers on the 

 Roopshoo plains, about the head of the Pangong 

 Lake, about the Tso-Mourari, and the Tso-Khar, 

 and in the country further east towards Hanle. 

 Biddulph . says : — " We first saw this at Chagra (the first halt 

 above the Pangong) in September, at an elevation of nearly 

 15,000 feet, where it was common and tame. We found it 

 flying about in flocks of from three to ten on the hill side above 

 the camp. In getting into the Chang Chenmo Valley again, 

 two days later, we saw it at an elevation of about 15,000 

 feet. 



" On the return journey, this time in June, I found them very 

 tame and plentiful nearly at the top of the Karakorum Pass, 

 say at an elevation of fully 18,000 feet." 



All these localities are inside the Ladak boundaries, of 

 which Shahidulla is considered the frontier post. 



Wilson writes to me : — " On the water-shed range crossing 

 from our Mussooree Hills into Thibet, you come across them at 

 once, and they are common enough from thence eastwards up 

 the Sutlej Valley." 



I do not think that it elsewhere comes within our limits. It 

 does not occur in Sikhim, nor, so far as I have been able to 

 learn, in Nepal or Kumaun, but it certainly occurs in Thibet just 

 north of both these provinces, and Blanford says that the 

 Governor of Kambajong presented him with four live birds 

 obtained just north of the Sikhim frontier in Eastern Thibet. 



Outside our limits, it probably extends eastwards through- 

 out the lofty plateaux north of the Himalayas to the borders 

 of the Chinese Province of Kansu, as Prjevalski obtained it 

 at the Kokonor ; probably it extends equally westwards in 

 suitable high regions. Just outside the Ladak frontier, and 

 the range through which the Karakorum leads, Cayley shot 

 some near Kizil-jilga on the upper Kara Kash. Others were 

 seen some 20 miles south of Malik Shah, and Biddulph saw 



