PTEROCLUEUS SENEGALENSIS ERLANGERI 305 



From the above it is plain that these birds can be driven right out 

 of a district by too much persecution at their drinking-places, a fact 

 which should be carefully borne in mind by sportsmen. 



Fortunately this sand-grouse does not seem to be decreasing in 

 India ; bags are made as big now as were made fifty years ago, and the 

 flocks seem to be as big and as numerous as ever they were in Hume's 

 time. It is not so long ago that Major Nurse wrote as follows : " The 

 Common Sand-Grouse {Pterocles exustus) has been unusually abundant 

 at Deesa this year. I feel sure they must have increased in numbers 

 since I first came here, now nearly five years ago. Possibly the last 

 few years, which have been unusually dry, have been especially 

 favourable to their increase. A few weeks ago over 400 were shot 

 over a running stream one morning by a party of seven or eight 

 guns, and this at a place where more than 200 birds had been killed 

 on several previous occasions during the course of a few weeks." 



Here and there a sportsman writes to say that he thinks the birds 

 have decreased in numbers, but where this is the case the decrease is 

 generally found to correspond with an increase in cultivation or 

 irrigation, and where their haunts have been left untouched there 

 the birds seem to be much as they were in Hume's time. 



The Common Sand-Grouse is an easy bird to domesticate and is 

 often kept by natives and has also been successfully kept by 

 Europeans. Mr. C. Barnby Smith, in the August, 1910, number of 

 the ' Avicultural Magazine ' has the following interesting notes on 

 this bird in captivity : — 



" A friend very kindly sent me over three Indian Painted Sand- 

 Grouse (Pterocles fasciatus) caught near Bhopal in Central India. 

 The birds (a cock and two hens) arrived in good healtli in the earl>- 

 part of last February. At the same time a consignment of the 

 Common Pintailed Sand-Grouse {Pterocles exustus) arrived. These 

 birds seem to travel well, as out of eighteen birds that left Calcutta 

 sixteen arrived alive. 



" Such of the Pintailed Sand-Grouse as I retained for myself I 

 put at first with the Painted Sand-Grouse in the conventional sort of 

 place — a large wooden shed (with sand floor) open on the south, on 

 which side it has a sort of glass verandah with grass on the ground 

 underneath. 



" The birds were, and are, fed on millet, canary, maw, rape and 

 hemp seeds, but seem to like millet best of all. They are also 

 supplied with lime, small flint, grit and rock salt. 

 20 



