Belluno and Novara, in Northern Italy; Perpignan at the
eastern, and Bayonne at the . western extremities;!»! the
Pyrenean chain. In France, according to . Degland and
Gerbe, they were found all over the basins of the Sein», the
Loire, the Gironde, and the Rhone, reaching as far as the
shores of the Atlantic, where the date of thé last capture, at
Sables d’Olonne, in Yendée, in February 1864, coincides
with that of the last and one of the most western of the
occurrences in England. In the Baltic they occurred both
ón the southern, shores, and as far as Nyköping, in Sweden;
whilst examples were obtained in Norway up to-62° N?* >
and a flock even reached the distant, Faeroes in May. -Thé
main, body appears to have swept through Germany as* far
as the North Sea, and finding the sandhills qfcthe coasts
of Denmark, Holland, and Belgium suited j j l their habits,
they took up their .abode .there; ijr considerable,.-numbers.
The dunes ,x>£ Zandveurt, already visited by a pair iü 1859,
again attracted several bands, and'at least one .clutchvof^ggs
was taken; but it was in Denmark that; the fcost;-interesting
, details were obtained, and the following abstract of a
paper by Professor -Reinhardt, of Copenhagen's furnished
hy Professor Newton
“ Early in June last,“ Herr B.ulow, ‘ an5 officer in the
Custom-house at Ringkjobing, sent >thë Professor several
living, birds-which had .heen snared % a gunner on their I
nests in the above-mentiöüed, district, together with four|è>fj
their eggs. . One of the latter was found by He^^Bulow in l
the box which,conveyed the .birds,Raving, been-laid- .on ‘the
jpurney. It was colourless, indicating .-that-, it had. Rein
prematurely produced. . The pother . three ^eggs.- wereRtlly
coloured.,: It appears,that this-, gunner,found two nests of
&yrrkwptés in his own neighbourhood, and a third ,at a place
called Bierregaard. On two of A© fiesfc* both the -birds
f a »ach-case the hens first and then the .coeks) were' caught,-
on the 6th June. ,These nêsta were near-one another.and
one, containing,three eggis, consisted-eif a plight depression
fn the sand, lined with a little dry marram. The other had
only two eggs, was placed among some ling, and furnished
in a like manner. The third nest was similar to the first,
and was half-way up a sandhill. Of the : three eggs sent to
Herr Bulow, he found that two were quite fresh, but in thé
third th e . foetus had begun to form, shewing that they had
been taken from different nests. Some more nests were
found by other people, but unfortunately none of them were
taken care of. The gunner, at Herr Bulow’s request, made -
further search, but not until the 27th of July did he . succeed
in making any new discoveries. On that day he met
with a flock of about a dozen birds, of which he- shot two.
He then went again to Bierregaard, where at last he put a
bird off its nest among some .stones in the sand, and con*
taining three eggs. Next day he returned to; it,. set a snare*
in which, after two or three hours,- the hen-bird was caught ;
and a few' hours later he procured the cock in the same way.
In the interval he found, to his surprise, that cine of-the
eggs had hatched. He took away with him the pair of old
birds, the newly-born chick, and the remaining two -eggs-,
which, on getting home, he put in a box of "wool by ifehe fire,
where a -second-egg was hatched. Tim-third- proved to be
rotten. The chicks only lived one day, and it seems they
were hot preserved. On that same day -‘(the 28 th),-while
waiting about for;these birds to-be‘ caught, he stumbled on
another nest, from which he shot both the owners.”
Returning to the subject of migration : the Sand-grouse
visited Heligoland, where about thirty-five were shot-in: May
and June; and a few in autumn, when they also-occurred at
Nordern’ey ; Borkhum in May and June, and again ©jr their
return, in September. The last recorded individual, of this
invasion was obtained alive, having flown against the telegraph
wires in June 1864, near Plauen, in Saxony; and was sent to
the Zoological G ardens in Dresden^* Mr. Dresser states that
about twenty were said to have been seen in that year, and
three of them shot at Brody, Galicia ; but this récord may
possibly refer to the occurrence in .previous years already-cited>
As regards the numbers of this.-invasion*: it as? undoubted
that a very large proportion passed unrecorded,* even in the
* E. Opel, Journal fiir-OrhitlioIégie-, 1 8 6 4 ,-.3 1 2 , .