284 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



arrangements to go out this morning, 10th June 1900, with him, and 

 see if I could gather any information myself. I first went to the 

 place where these Sand-Grouse water, where I found, close to a 

 small village called " Kasim " the Common Sand-Grouse flighting in 

 packs and a very few pairs, while to my surprise the Pin-tails all 

 came in pairs (I saw five or six paii's). I shot one pair of the latter 

 and then proceeded to search a few miles further on in a vast open 

 plain for nests. I found only two nests, each containing three eggs 

 of tlie Common Sand-Grouse. In each case I approached so close 

 to the hird in the nest that there was no necessity to shoot it in 

 order to identify it. On my return I dissected the female Pin-tailed 

 Sand-Grouse and found an egg inside quite ready for laying, and I 

 have no doubt that it would have been laid to-day in the same plain 

 I was searching in had the bird lived. 



" I regret to say the egg was broken badly, first pierced by shot 

 and again broken in extraction." 



Salvin describes these l)irds as breeding in the Atlas, and says, 

 " The extensive sandy plains termed the Harakata, of which El 

 Korarf is one of the largest, are the only localities in which we met 

 with the Sand-Grouse. It makes no nest, but scrapes a slight hollow 

 in the sand, in which it deposits its three eggs. These are laid in 

 May, the young being hatched about the second week in June." 



I have a really magnificent series of the eggs of this sand-grouse 

 taken in the Tigris Valley, and given me by Captain Pitman, whose 

 notes I freely quote further on. 



These eggs, which are selected from a still greater number, form 

 a series of 100 eggs, the great majority full clutches of three eggs 

 each, a few pairs, and a few more single eggs. 



The nests consisted of mere depressions scratched by the birds 

 in the earth, and with no lining other than a casual scrap of grass 

 accidentally placed therein and, as a rule, not even this was present. 

 Unlike senegallus, which selects the barest places, generally the baked 

 mud-flats, the Large Pintailed Sand-Grouse breeds on the desert in 

 places where there is a certain amount of grass, thin vetch or the 

 Polygonum on which they so largely feed. Although they can hardly 

 be said to breed in colonies in the way gulls and terns breed, yet 

 vast multitudes breed in the same area, nests in many cases being 

 only a few yards apart. During June and July I9I6, great areas of 

 scrub and self-sown crops were accidentally burnt, and dozens of 



