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Show 354 MR. J. E. HARTING ON RARE [Apr. 4, Equal in size to the well-known Collared Pratincole (G.pratincola), which, dispersed throughout Southern and Eastern Europe, Africa, and a great portion of Southern Asia, occasionally visits the British Islands, it is distinguished from that species by having no " collar," the head and nape black, a white spot under the eye and passing behind it, the quills much blacker than in G. pratincola, the tail squarer and blacker, the outer feathers scarcely longer than the rest, and with a white spot on their distal half. The species is well figured in the excellent work of Messrs. Pollen and Van D a m (Recherches sur la Faune de Madagascar,' 1868), who, however, give no account of its breeding-habits, nor describe its eggs. It was not until thirty years after this bird had been described that any information concerning its habits was published. In 1863 Messrs. Roch and Edward Newton, in an account of their visit to Madagascar printed in ' The Ibis ' for that year, recorded their having met with it near Tamatave. They remarked:- " At our first halting-place on the road from Tamatave to the capital, on the 1st of October, we saw and shot several Pratincoles. The river Hivondrona runs out into the sea about a mile and a half below a village bearing the same name, and has on its left bank a treeless sandy plain. Here we found these birds, together with Sanderlings and two species of Plover. Unfortunately, those that we skinned were destroyed, and we have no specimens by which to identify them ; but we have little doubt that the Pratincoles were of the same species as an example afterwards obtained by Dr. Roch ;" who says : - " At Nossi-be a small village to the north of Tamatave, I found many Pratincoles in the native burial-ground, which appeared to be their breeding-place, though I was unable to discover either eggs or young. Their manners strongly reminded me of those of the Lapwing, screaming high in the air, and then darting along the ground as if to draw m y attention away from their broods. I thus easily obtained several specimens." The following year Mr. Edward Newton observed these birds in the same locality in September ('Ibis' 1863, p. 455). Dr. Roch has described the flight of this Pratincole as reminding him of that of the Lapwing ; but the late Mr. Swinhoe was doubtless more accurate when, describing the habits of Glareola orientalis as observed by him in Formosa, he likened its appearance on the wing to the Golden Plover; for, like that bird, the Pratincoles have long, pointed, narrow flight-feathers, unlike the full rounded wing of the Lapwing. Their food consists chiefly of sand-beetles and flying ants, of which they are especially fond. Like other species of the Limicola, the Pratincoles lay their eggs in a depression of the ground, with very little nest, and the young run as soon as they are hatched. The egg of Glareola ocularis is much paler than that of G. pratincola, and assimilates both in shape and colour to the eggs of Cursorius, showing an affinity to that genus of birds, which is also indicated in the anatomical structure. |