61
THE RE-APPEARANCE OF PALLAS'S SAND
GROUSE (SYRRHAPTES PARADOXUS) IN
BRITAIN AND IN ESSEX.
Judging from the already-published reports in Natural History
journals, it seems probable that 1888 will vie with 1863 as a year
of special grace in the diary of the ornithologist. The sand grouse
has again made its appearance on the Continent and in Britain in
very great numbers, and we are glad to announce that the immigra-
tion has, like the previous one, extended into Essex. Below we give
two notes on the subject from our President, Mr. E. A. Fitch, F.L.S.,
and Mr. Walter Crouch, F.Z.S., referring to the occurrence of the
birds in our county. Mr. Harting has printed, in the "Zoologist" for
June, a note of warning to ornithologists to be on the alert this season.
He says:—
"For a month past I have been prepared to hear of its arrival in England, for
several letters have reached me announcing its arrival in Poland and Prussia.
Herr Taczanowski, writing from the Museum at Warsaw on April 26th, reported
his having received, on April 24th, a female specimen which had been shot out of
a flock, three days previously, in the neighbourhood of Plock, in Poland. On the
25th he received alive a male with a broken wing, which had been procured out of
a flock of more than two hundred on the banks of the River Pilica; another was
received by him from Kouski, south of Radom; and a pair was purchased about the
same time in Warsaw market."
Dr. A. B. Meyer, of the Royal Zoological Museum, Dresden, gives,
in "Nature," May 17th and 24th, 1888, a list of over sixty records of
the birds having been seen, sometimes in large flocks, between April
21 st and May 16th, in different localities in Poland, Saxony, Prussia,
Silesia, Hungary, Bohemia, Island of Rugen, Holstein, etc.; and in
Britain, Mr. Harting records flocks as observed from May 15 th to
May 25th in Aberdeenshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk,
Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Yorkshire. And now we can
record it from Essex. Mr. Fitch's note furnishes so much interest-
ing information on the habits and distribution of the bird, and its
former immigration into Britain, that we give it in full :—
"Sand Grouse in Essex.—This bird was unknown as an inhabitant of Europe
until 1853, when Herr Moschler included it, as very rare, in his list of the birds
of Sarepta in the Lower Wolga. In July, 1859, one was killed at Walpole St.
Peter, Norfolk ; another in November of the same year at Lydd, Kent; a third
in North Wales: a fourth in Jutland, and a fifth in Holland. These are the first
records of their occurrence in Western Europe. It was in 1863 that the remark-
able 'Tartar invasion, which is certainly unparalleled in the annals of ornithology,'
took place. Prof. Alfred Newton has given us the history of this irruption in