LAKGE PINTAILED SAND-GROUSE 149 



top of the buff breast from the lighter buff of the neck. The hen 

 has also a necklace here, but it is double in her. Both have a 

 beautiful variegated patch on the wing near the pinion-joint, 

 formed by white-edged feathers, their ground-colour being 

 chocolate in the cock and black in the hen. 



It may be that the very local occurrence of this exquisitely 

 beautiful, and, where it occurs, very abundant bird, have pre- 

 vented it getting a distinct appellation in our Indian tongues ; 

 it is only at all common in Northern and Central Sind and the 

 Punjab, and only a winter visitor there, but it has strayed to 

 Delhi and been obtained in Kajputana. It leaves for the north 

 early in April at latest ; its range is very wide, and it must be 

 one of the most abundant of the family, being found not only 

 in South-western and Central Asia, but being represented in 

 Southern Europe and North Africa by what can hardly be called 

 a distinct species, though it can just be separated as a local race, 

 the so-called P. pyrenaicus. 



When with us it is in enormous flocks ; they were, says Hume, 

 in tens of thousands on a vast plain some miles from Hoti 

 Mardan, the only place where he had had a chance of observing 

 them ; here they only frequented the bare and fallow land, though 

 cultivated ground was at hand, and were very wary, requiring to 

 be stalked by way of nullahs or ravines. Their flight seemed to 

 him even more powerful than that of other sand-grouse, and the 

 note, uttered freely either on the ground or on the wing, was, 

 although rather like that of the black-bellied species, still quite 

 distinct from that of any other. Dresser renders it as kaat kaat 

 ka, and Blanford calls it a loud clanging cry. The food is leaves, 

 seeds, small pulse and grain, and plenty of gravel is taken. 



This is one of the species the male of which has been actually 

 observed to soak its breast to water its young, as recorded by 

 Mr. E. G. Meade- Waldo, the first to discover this unique habit 

 in 1895. He says, in the Avicultural Magazine (1905-1906), 

 " I have had the good fortune to see the males of Pterocles 

 arenarius, the black-breasted sand-grouse, and Pterocles alchatus, 

 the greater pintailed sand-grouse, getting water for their young 

 •in the wild state, but, had I not seen it administered in confine- 

 ment, would have considered them to have been demented birds 



