PTEBOCLDBUS SBNBGALLUS 315 



Mr. Percy Hyde, to whose letter I have already referred, fsays 

 that he found them " tame, confiding birds, easy of approach and 

 easy to shoot, and for the table far superior to the Close-barred 

 Sand-Grouse, which was very plentiful round about Karachi." 



Captain Pitman, however, does not consider them as good eating 

 as the Large Pin-tailed Sand-Grouse, and says that old birds require 

 hanging for some time, as otherwise they are very tough. 



Their food seems to be much the same as that of P. a. cauda- 

 ciitiis and consists to a great extent of the seed of the same 

 Polygonum as that on which that bird feeds for much of the year. 



As regards India there is nothing added to what Hume has 

 already recorded : — 



" They keep together in parties of from five to fifty ; very often 

 each flock, at any rate in winter, consists of one sex only, but occa- 

 sionally I have found both sexes intermingled. They trot about on 

 the dry soil picking up seeds and occasionally insects, or squat 

 motionless sunning themselves in the mornmg sun. They fly off to 

 drink morning and evening, often at comparatively distant localities, 

 and generally comport themselves much as P. exustus and arenarius 

 do but are more birds of the wilderness than these. 



" Their food is mostly seeds, but I have found a good many 

 insects mixed with these in the stomachs of those I have examined, 

 and they are, I infer, less purely vegetarians than the Large Sand- 

 Grouse." 



