CORDEAUX : PALLAS' SAND-GROUSE. 



clover, trefoil, Italian rye-grass, a few barleycorns, and some seeds of 

 weeds, as the common dock ; also fragments of the leaves of the 

 white clover plant. The gizzards also contained many small sharp 

 fragments of white quartz. 



The call-note I only heard once, and then indistinctly ; it was 

 a loud guttural cluck, and I put it down as resembling the word 

 ' cur-ruck.^ Those who have had better opportunities of hearing 

 it at Spurn compare it to the call-note of the turnstone. 

 Colonel Prjevalski says that in the air the male birds utter a 

 peculiar note, like ^ truck-iuruck^ truck -turuck^^ especially when m 

 small flocks, and this probably will be found as closely to resemble 

 their call as anything that can be given on paper. 



In a freshly-killed bird the iris was dark hazel, the beak lavender- 

 grey, darker at the tip. The parasite of the Sand-Grouse is the largest 

 I have seen on any species — it is a huge acarid. Two examples, 

 taken from the head of a male bird, have been sent to the Rev. O. 

 Pickard-Cambridge for determination. 



The Sand-Grouse which have reached the East coast of England, 

 as far as can at present be ascertained, represent but a very small 

 proportion of the 'great horde' which, from May 8th to the 25th, 

 passed Heligoland, and it is fair to presume that the main body of 

 this Tartar host swept onward in a south-westerly direction along 

 the coast-line of Europe, in which case we may expect to hear of 

 them again in some parts of France. That any should have visited 

 our shores is the more remarkable when we consider that they not 

 only started, but persistently followed up for some hundreds of miles, 

 a line of flight which, in their case at least, was across an unknown 

 sea, and might, for anything they knew to the contrary, have been 

 an Atlantic. Perhaps, however, experiences gathered in crossing the 

 waters of their own Caspian proved all-sufficient for their purpose. 



May 3 1 J/, 1888. 



OCCURRENCES OF 

 PALLAS' SAND-GROUSE AT HELIGOLAND. 



JOHN CORDEAUX, M.B.O.U., 

 Great Cotes, Ulceby, Lincolnshire. 



In a letter dated the 25th of May, Mr. Gatke has given me the 

 following dates of the occurrence of the Sand- Grouse {Syrr/ui/^fcs 

 paradoxus) at Heligoland. 



' May 8th, twelve birds ; 13th, a score ; 14th, some ; 1 51)1, some ; 



i6th, flights from five to twenty — twenty-five shot; 17th, L , 



early th is morning, on Sandy Island, shot eighteen; iSth, fliglns 



July 1888. 



