22 THE COMMON CRANE. 
far south as Nubia, the majority wintering in the southern and 
summering in the northern portions of their range, though some 
breed as far south as Spain. In Palestine, Asia Minor, the 
countries about the Caspian, Persia, Afghanistan, and Beluchis- 
tan, Eastern Turkestan, Siberia, Kashgar, and China, this 
species is found, as in Europe, wintering for the most part in 
the more southern countries it visits. 
Whether Japan should really be included in the range of this 
species I do not know; the Japanese form has been separated _ 
as Jongirostris, and is said to differ in the greater amount of 
white about the face and in having a bill six inches in length at 
front (from margin of feathers) against 4°6, which is a maxi- 
mum for the bill similarly measured in our Indian birds. 
Blyth, it may be remembered, at one time announced that 
our Indian bird was /ongirostris; but Mr. Gurney has kindly 
measured for me the bills of eight specimens of the European 
bird (two of them killed in England), and has found those of 
adults (measured as above) to vary only from 4°05 to 4°7, which 
dimensions cover those of every Indian specimen that I have 
examined, and I have no doubt, therefore, that I have correctly 
referred our bird to communts. 
I HAVE never myself observed this species in Upper India before 
the 3rd of October, and, as a rule, the majority do not seem to 
arrive during the latter half of that month. From Central India 
and the Deccan, the majority disappear by the middle of March, 
in the Doab they remain a fortnight later, and further north 
and west they are still in great force in some years in the mid- 
dle of April. But though the majority thus leave, a certain 
proportion, almost invariably, I believe, young birds that will not 
breed that year, remain behind from a fortnight to three weeks 
later than the rest of their comrades, so that I have shot them 
in Etawah as late as the 20th of April, and at Jhilum, as the 
3rd of May. 
In Sind they seem to arrive earlier. Doig says: “Large 
flocks of this Crane begin to come in, in the month of August ; 
they are generally seen flying very high, and are apparently 
going far south, probably towards Cutch. By the month of 
November the rice fields are swarming with them. The latest 
date on which I have seen this Crane, in the Nara Districts, was 
the 4th May, on which date I shot two out of a small flock of 
five. They feed on the rice fields usually in the early morning, 
retiring to lonely plains or swamps during the day time.” 
The Common Crane, like most waders, passes much of its time 
by the water side, often standing asleep in the noonday sun, in 
the water itself. Where large rivers are near, at least if their 
banks are sandy and shelving, it certainly resorts to them in 
preference to tanks, and may be found in or near the water at 
almost any hour of the day and night, except, perhaps, between 
