296 PTEROCLID. 
make no nest to speak of, but merely scrape a slight depression 
in the ground, at a spot, sheltered by a tuft of grass or bush. 
The eggs, two or three in number, (usually three) are of a cylin- 
drical shape, delicate pale salmon-pink in color, with specks and 
tiny streaks of brownish-red, with a good many spots or clouds 
of pale inky-purple intermingled. 
They measure 1:4 inches in length by 0°98 in breadth. 
Pterocles lichtensteini, Tem. 
800bis.—Murray’s Vertebrate Zoology of Sind, p. 212; Game 
Birds of India, Vol. I, p. 65. 
THE CLOSE-BARRED SAND GROUSE. 
Length, 10°25 to 10°75 ; expanse, 20 to 21; wing, 6°5 to 6°75 ; 
‘tail, 3°25; tarsus, 1:05 ; bill from gape, 0°65 ; weight, 8 oz. 
Bill fleshy-brown ; irides brown ; legs orange-yellow. 
Frontal zone white, or buffy-white; a broad black semi-cireu- 
lar band behind it extending from the exterior angle of the 
eye on each side; behind this another white or buffy-white 
band, interrupted on the crown, the feathers of which are buffy 
white and mesially dark brown; a buff spot above the hinder 
angle of each eye; chin and throat pale buff, their sides the 
same, with minute black spots; upper breast, hind-neck, and 
back, pale or fulvous white, with regular and close barrings 
of black ; scapulars, wing-coverts and tertiaries the same, the 
black transverse bars rather broader and deeper in color, the 
tips of the feathers broadly yellowish-buff; upper tail-coverts 
fulvous-white, the black bars more distant and as wide as the 
fulvous interspaces ; primaries and their coverts hair-brown, the 
outer web of the first margined with dull white, more conspi- 
cuous basally, and some of the inner ones with white margins 
to the tips; secondaries dark brown; lower breast yellowish- 
buff, with a narrow black band crossing it in the middle and 
another on the lower part of the breast, formed by the dark 
termination of the lowest breast feathers; below this the abdo- 
men, flanks, vent and under tail-coverts are white, with trans- 
verse brown bars; tarsal plumes buffy-white; tail barred buff 
and black, the terminal black bar broadest, with a streak run- 
ning up the shafts of the feathers and partially dividing the 
broad buffy tips. 
The female wants the frontal patch and the semi-circular 
band behind it, also the buff breast and band crossing it in 
the middle ; the chin and throat are pale buffy, minutely spotted 
with dark brown; the upper surface of the body finely, closely, 
and narrowly barred with pale fulvous and dark brown; the 
lower surface the same, but the fulvous interspaces are broader 
and the dark bars narrower. 
The Close-barred Sand Grouse isa cold weather visitant to 
the trans-indus portion of Sind. 
