SITHEOTIS AURITA 209 



baue patch in a field of grass. The grass-field selected is seldom one 

 of any very great size or having dense growth in it, and the bird 

 seems to prefer small pieces of grass of some two feet or so high and 

 of scanty growth. The bird watched by Mr. Wenden deposited its 

 eggs " on the bare ground, which was perfectly level (without the 

 least signs of scratching), in some thin scanty grass, about two feet 

 high and about two yards in from the edge of the grass-patch. Not 

 a hundred yards from the plot of grass in which the eggs were 

 deposited was a preserve, over a mile long by a quarter broad, of very 

 high dense grass, a far more likely place, one would have thought, 

 for so wary a bird to lay its eggs." 



When the bird does lay its eggs in a vast stretch of grass, as is 

 sometimes the case in Kathiawar, it is said almost invariably to 

 choose some part where the grass is shorter and more scanty than 

 elsewhere and also often to make use of some bare spot close to the 

 outskirts of the field. 



The nest found by Mr. Wenden contained three eggs, one found 

 in it on the 15th, one laid on the lOth and a third on the 18th ; this 

 corresponds with what we should expect and with what I have 

 heard from other observers, and it seems, therefore, fairly certain that 

 the species lays its eggs on alternate days. 



As a rule the full clutch of eggs consists of four, but often only 

 three are laid, sometimes but two and very rarely five. I have never 

 seen a clutch with five eggs myself, but Lieut. F. Alexander recorded 

 that this number was sometimes laid and Mr. James once found five 

 chicks together. 



In shape the eggs are typically very broad ovals, more spherical 

 than those of any of the other Bustards ; but except for this they are 

 hardly distinguishable from those of the Lesser Bustard, Otis tctrax, 

 though on an average they seem considerably smaller. For instance, 

 the average size of the twenty-six eggs of the Likh in the British 

 Museum collection is 1'82 X 1'6 inches (= about 46 X 406 mm.) 

 whereas the twenty-three eggs of Otis tetrax measure 207 X 1"51 

 (= about .52'6 X 38"2mm.), these figures showing well the difference 

 in comparative shape and size in the eggs of the two species. 



Hume gives the average of twenty-three eggs as 1'88 inches nearly, 

 by rather more than 1'59 (= 48 X 40'5 mm.) and the average of 

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