32 THE DEMOISELLE CRANE, 
often similarly seen, some few being occasionally met with there 
at other times during the winter. One was shot on the 22nd 
of May (!) on a small lake between Hanle and the Tso-mou- 
rari—a solitary bird that must have dropped out of a flock. 
So far as ascertained, therefore, the normal range of this spe- 
cies within our limits would appear to be the plains portions of 
the whole Bombay Presidency, excluding the sub-ghat littoral, 
but including Cutch, Kathiawar and Sind, in the latter of which, 
however, it is rare Trans-Indus, Berar, the Central India Agency,* 
the Central Provinces, the Nizam’s Territories, Mysore and 
the northern portions of the Coimbatore District, the North- 
West Provinces, Behar, and the submontane districts of Bengal 
and Assam, as far east as Darrang, Oudh, Rajputana and the 
Punjab, where it seems rare in the more north-westerly portions, 
and the Central and Eastern Himalayas generally, on passage. 
Outside our limits, the Demoiselle occurs regularly in South- 
ern and South-Eastern Europe (stragglers having been shot 
in the British Isles, Scandinavia, &c.), and in suitable loca- 
lities in Africa, as far south as Natal. A migrant like the 
Common Crane, it goes much farther south, and does not extend 
nearly so far north in Europe. 
It is found in Asia Minor, in all the countries about the 
Caspian, in Eastern Turkestan, Afghanistan, Southern and 
South-Eastern Siberia, Dauria, Mongolia and Western China, 
and Prjevalsky saw a flock at the Kokonor on the 28th of 
February. 
A COLD weather visitant to India, the Demoiselle Crane arrives 
in Guzerat, and I believe the northern portions of the Deccan 
very early in October, and, so faras I can ascertain, a little Zater, 
and not earlier, in Upper India. The earliest date that I have 
found noted for it in the North-West Provinces is the first week 
in October by A. Anderson ; but, as a rule, my own experience 
leads me to think that from the 10th to the 15th is the usual 
period, at which it arrives in the Dun and other districts of the 
Doab. 
Moreover, this species never occurs, I think, in Upper India, 
in the same numbers that it does in the Deccan and Guzerat 
and Kathiawar. You see enormous flocks no doubt—flocks, one 
of which I once estimated to contain fully 2,000 individuals,— 
* Not uncommon on tanks about Oojein and Ooneil—Capiain W. F. Heaviside, 
R.E. 
+ Icounted carefully with a glass the birds occupying one section of a bank, and 
estimated by subsequent measurement, careful landmarks having been taken, the 
proportion that this section bore to the entire area occupied. The birds were in 
one uniform dense belt along the water’s edge. From a post to a small promontory 
was 144 feet in length; this section contained, by actual count, 480 to 500 (three 
separate persons counted them, and hardly a bird moved the whole time.) They were 
8,9 and 1odeep. The birds looked to be touching, but this gives nearly six square 
feet to each bird. The flock extended 120 feet left of the post, and 376 right 
of the promontory, and except at the extreme ends was perfectly uniform in 
