Limosa lapponica, Zinné.
Vernacular Names.—[NONE.]
f'FOUND this species fairly common in February 1872,
£ in the Kurrachee Harbour, and ascertained its occur-
^ rencc further east about the mouths of the Indus.
» Subsequently Captain Butler procured a few specify
mens at Kurrachee. There is no other authentic
instance of its occurrence within our limits.
No doubt Blyth says (Ibis, 1865, p. 36, n.) : " There
is an Himalayan example in the Derby Museum, Liverpool, presented
by Colonel Everest. Mr. Hodgson also obtained the
species in Nepal." Colonel Everest, at one time or another,
worked almost all over India, but no doubt much of his time
was spent in the Himalayas, and this specimen may have been
obtained there, or it may not have been obtained in India at
all. As for its alleged occurrence in Nepal, Hodgson docs
not figure the species, nor mention it in any of his notes, nor
is it included in any of his, or Mr. Gray's, lists of his collection
to which I have access. Dresser calmly states that " Captain
Bulger records it as not uncommon at Mulcivon, Selham and
Ras Dowra in Sikhim 1" It seems almost needless to say that
Captain Bulger does nothing of the kind. Of course these
places could not be in Sikhim, but must be in some country
where Arabic is spoken, and accordingly I find that it is Mr.
C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake who makes the above-quoted remark in
his Birds of Morocco, (Ibis, 1869, 154).
Outside our limits it has been shot near Ormarra on the
Mekran Coast, but I have no record of its occurrence elsewhere
in Beluchistan, nor in Afghanistan, nor Eastern or Western
Turkestan, nor in Persia ; but as both Pallas and Eichwald say, it
is common on the Caspian, and I know it to occur on the Mekran
Coast, it most probably also visits both the Northern and
Southern Coasts of Persia. It is rare on the Black Sea, and the
islands of the eastern portion of the Mediterranean, and it
does not seem to have been as yet observed in either Asia
Minor or Palestine.
Brehm says it occurs in Egypt and Nubia, but neither Shelley
nor Heuglin ever met with it there; the latter, however, shot it
E 2