•276 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



Hartert says that it has been taken at Muscat and at Aden. 



Nidification. — There is hardly anything on record about the 

 breeding of this sand-grouse, although it must breed practically 

 throughout its range. Ogilvie-Grant, in his ' Game-Birds," quotes 

 Heuglin to the effect that he found nests of this species containing 

 " two cylindrical eggs, much the colour of dirty and faded Pewits' 



eggs." 



There is one egg of this species in the British Museum collection 

 taken at Moraul, by Malan, in 1851. In ground-colour this is a dirty 

 yellowish stone-colour, or earth-colour, and it is rather profusely 

 covered all over its surface with largish blotches of dull vandyke- 

 brown and with others again underlying these of dull lavender-grey. 

 It is of a dull, glossless surface, with a texture comparatively rough 

 to both touch and sight. In general appearance it is like a small, 

 pale and very dull-coloured egg of Pteroclurus alchata, but it can be 

 matched by no egg I have seen in very large series of the latter, and 

 its texture is totally different. 



It measures I'YO X 1'20 inches (=41 X 27'3 mm.). There is 

 no date given to show in what month it was taken. It came to the 

 Museum with the rest of the Crowley Bequest and in the Crowley 

 Catalogue there is the following remark : " One egg from Minereh. 

 Eevd. S. C. Malan, ex Tristram, ' Tristram says the species is not 

 quite certain.' " 



General Habits. — They are, of course, only winter visitors in India, 

 occurring some years in fair numbers, whilst in others very few, if 

 any, visit this country at all. They appear never to arrive before 

 January and all leave again before April, the majority in early March. 

 Hame says of these birds : " With us they are generally met with in 

 pairs or parties of three or four, in the neighbourhood of some little 

 patch of cultivation, or where broken, rocky ground or scrub afford 

 some kind of cover. They lie well and though they fly fast enough, 

 like all their congeners when well under way, rise an easy shot." 



There is practically nothing else on record about this sand-grouse 

 in India, and Blandford in his Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia 

 gives the best description extant of the habits of the southern form 

 of this little sand-grouse (,p. 419 et seq.) : — 



