This Name
Is Used, However, For A Variety Of Birds, Among Others The Partridge." - H.
C.] The Hind-Toe Is
Absent, the toes are unseparated, recognisable only by
the broad flat nails, and fitted below with a callous couch, whilst
The
whole foot is covered with short dense feathers like hair, and is more
like a quadruped's paw than a bird's foot.
The home of the Syrrhaptes is in the Altai, the Kirghiz Steppes, and the
country round Lake Baikal, though it also visits the North of China in
great flights. "On plains of grass and sandy deserts," says Gould (Birds
of Great Britain, Part IV.), "at one season covered with snow, and at
another sun-burnt and parched by drought, it finds a congenial home; in
these inhospitable and little-known regions it breeds, and when necessity
compels it to do so, wings its way ... over incredible distances to obtain
water or food." Hue says, speaking of the bird on the northern frontier of
China: "They generally arrive in great flights from the north, especially
when much snow has fallen, flying with astonishing rapidity, so that the
movement of their wings produces a noise like hail." It is said to be very
delicate eating. The bird owes its place in Gould's Birds of Great
Britain to the fact - strongly illustrative of its being moult volant,
as Polo says it is - that it appeared in England in 1859, and since then,
at least up to 1863, continued to arrive annually in pairs or companies in
nearly all parts of our island, from Penzance to Caithness. And Gould
states that it was breeding in the Danish islands. A full account by Mr.
A. Newton of this remarkable immigration is contained in the Ibis for
April, 1864, and many details in Stevenson's Birds of Norfolk, I. 376
seqq. There are plates of Syrrhaptes in Radde's Reisen im Sueden von
Ost-Sibirien, Bd. II.; in vol. v. of Temminck, Planches Coloriees, Pl.
95; in Gould, as above; in Gray, Genera of Birds, vol. iii. p. 517
(life size); and in the Ibis for April, 1860. From the last our cut is
taken.
[See A. David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 389, on Syrrhaptes
Pallasii or Syrrhaptes Paradoxus. - H. C.]
[Illustration: Syrrhaptes Pallasii.]
NOTE 4. - Gerfalcons (Shonkar) were objects of high estimation in the
Middle Ages, and were frequent presents to and from royal personages. Thus
among the presents sent with an embassy from King James II. of Aragon to
the Sultan of Egypt, in 1314, we find three white gerfalcons. They were
sent in homage to Chinghiz and to Kublai, by the Kirghiz, but I cannot
identify the mountains where they or the Peregrines were found. The
Peregrine falcon was in Europe sometimes termed Faucon Tartare. (See
Menage s. v. Sahin.) The Peregrine of Northern Japan, and probably
therefore that of Siberia, is identical with that of Europe. Witsen speaks
of an island in the Sea of Tartary, from which falcons were got,
apparently referring to a Chinese map as his authority; but I know nothing
more of it.
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