288 IJAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



his family was close by, would run up to the hen, make a demon- 

 stration, when the young would run out, get under him and suck 

 the water from his breast." 



In a longer account in the ' Avicultural Magazine " for 1906, 

 p. 219, Mr. Meade-Waldo gave yet further details of this curious 

 habit, together with other most interesting details. He writes : — 



" Incubation lasts from twenty-one to twenty-three days, the 

 hen sits by day, the cock taking her place by night, usually going 

 on the eggs about 5 p.m. ; three eggs are a full clutch. The young 

 when hatched quickly become independent, and about the tenth 

 day separate at night, roosting away from their parents, and as far 

 as possible from each other, not settling down to their final roosting- 

 place until it is almost dark. Both parents brood the young when 

 they are very small. 



" The extraordinary method employed by the parent male Sand- 

 Grouse of conveying water to their young by saturating the feathers 

 of their breast, was first described by me in 1896, and since by Mr. 

 St. Quintin in his interesting account of the successful rearing of 

 the Lesser Pin-tailed Sand-Grouse, P. exustus. I have had the good 

 fortune to see the males of Pterocles arenavius, the Black-breasted 

 Sand-Grouse and Ptcrocluriis alcliata, the Greater Pin-tailed Sand- 

 Grouse getting water for their young in a wild state, but, had I not 

 seen it administered in confinement, would have considered them to 

 have been demented birds trying to dust in mud and water, when 

 unlimited dusting ground surrounded them on every side. 



" In very waterless districts, where the only water procurable 

 was from 'deep wells situated at great distances from one another, 

 this method of procuring water must be most precarious, for I saw 

 P. arenavius waiting by the wells and going to the muddy spot where 

 the skins used to be laid before being loaded on to the camels, and 

 where the water was slopped over from the troughs where the 

 animals drank. I also saw them fly over the prickly Zareba 

 surrounding the tent-villages and go to where there was a soft spot 

 for the same purpose. I did" [not?] "see P. alchatus actually 

 soaking themselves, they were much wilder, and also in less arid 

 places, but I repeatedly saw cocks pass over, their white breasts 

 soaked in mud and water." 



Captain C. E. S. Pitman, who observed this bird very closely in 

 Mesopotamia during the campaign of 191(3-17 writes: — 



" About the question you ask me as to P. a. caadacuUt giving 

 their young ones drink dui-ing the breeding season. I often tried to 

 watch the young ones both \\hen newly hatched and when older but 



