PAINTED SAND-GROUSE 153 



Alima, from 7 to 10 a.m. They did not come back that evening, 

 but turned up again next morning. They flew high and very 

 strongly, with a loud clucking note somewhat like that of a fowl, 

 audible even when the birds themselves were so high as hardly 

 to be seen. They were shy and required a hard blow to bring 

 them down, but were " excellent eating, not at all dry or 

 tasteless, the breast having dark and light meat the same as 

 black game." He never found anything in their stomachs but 

 seed and other vegetable matter. 



Painted Sand-grouse. 



Pterocles fasciatiis. Pahari bhat-titar, Hindustani, 



This is the smallest of our well-known sand-grouse, and of 

 remarkable beauty of plumage, at any rate in the case of the 

 male, whose buff ground colour is diversified above by broad and 

 close-set chocolate bands, about as wide as the interspaces 

 between them. The wings have a few white bands, and the 

 head two bands each of black-and-white; the breast is unhanded, 

 but below this the plumage is coloured with black and buff in 

 narrow equal bands. The orange bill and yellow eye-lids are 

 also characteristic colour-points of this species. There are no 

 long *'pin " feathers in the tail. 



The hen is of a more ordinary type, barred with buff and 

 black nearly all over, the head being spotted with black, not 

 barred. 



This sand-grouse is less short-legged and squatty than the 

 others, and not so long in the wings ; it approaches the partridge 

 type more, in fact, and in accordance with this structure it is 

 found to run much more quickly and freely than other sand- 

 grouse, so that it might almost at times be taken for a partridge. 

 It also frequents rather different localities from other sand- 

 grouse, for though, like the rest of them, liking dry soil, it is 

 found in places where there is a good deal of bush and even tree 

 cover. Nor is it typically a bird of the plains, for it especially 

 affects hills and ravines, and likes to frequent the mounds left 

 when a jungle village has been deserted. In the rains it deserts 



