18 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1891. 



; 842^,— THE COLLARED PRATINCOLE. 



Glareola pratineola, Lin. 



Mi'. Vidal obtained a specimen in Ratnagiri ; this is the only re- 

 corded instance that I can find of its occurrence within our limits 

 outside the Province of Sind. 



Mr. Doig found them breeding in company with the Large 

 Swallow Plover (G /areola orient all*), and I cannot do better than 

 reproduce the account he gave of it in the pages of Stray Feathers* : — 



"On the 4th May I came across a lot of birds, which were new to 

 me, so I shot some to identify ; from the persistent way in which 

 the others kept flying round and round, I concluded that they must 

 be breeding, and on searching for their nests I found some half-dozen 

 all empty, and so thought that they were beginning to lay. 



" I accordingly left the place and returned on the 7th, when I 

 found after searching about that what I had taken for new nests were 

 really old ones, the place round about being covered with the broken 

 egg shells ; however, by patient searching I collected over fifty eggs. 

 The breeding ground was about fifteen acres in extent (the actual 

 portion where most of the nests were placed was only about an acre), 

 and was a salt plain with patches of coarse sedge here and there on 

 it, the whole being surrounded by dense tamarisk and rush jungle, 

 and was situated about half a mile from the bank of the Narra. 



" The nests were slight hollows scraped in the ground, and were 

 generally situated close to where the soil had been rooted up by wild 

 pigs, or in the centre, or by the side of, a lump of dried cowdung: this 

 latter was the favourite situation. The greatest number of eggs in 

 any nest was three. This seemed to be the normal number, but some 

 contained only two, and one had a single egg, and one young one, 

 just hatched. I shot several specimens which I have preserved and 

 sent to Mr. Hume, for identification, along with their eggs. As one 

 or two of the specimens appear to me to be undoubted orientalis, I 

 have entered this note against both, as I conclude that both must have 

 been breeding in company. I also found Cursorius coroniandclicm and 

 Lobimnellus indicus breeding in the same place. 



" These birds have a most peculiar habit of lying stretched on the 

 ground with their wings spread out ; they not only did this while I 



* Stray Feathers, Vol. III., p. 375. 



