OKTYUOliXIS. 435 



Ortygornis pondicerianus (Gniel.). The Grey Partridye. 



Ortvgornis ponticeriana (Gm.}, Jerd. B. 2nd. ii, p. 569; Hume. 

 Rouyh Draft X. $ E. no. 82i>. 



The Grey Partridge is found and breeds throughout the more 

 open and drier plains country of India Proper. It eschews equally 

 the more humid tracts of Lower Bengal, the Dhoous and Terais 

 that skirt the bases of the Himalayas, and the dense forests and 

 forest-clad hills of Southern, Central, and Eastern India. 



It lays from February to June, by far the most eggs being met 

 with in April, and again from September to November. In all 

 these mouths I have myself taken eggs, but comparatively very 

 few in the autumn ; and I have been unable to make out whether 

 the eggs then found are a second laying of hens that have already 

 laid in the spring, or whether they are only laid by birds that, 

 owing to some accident, have had no spring broods. 



The nest, when there is one, for I have repeatedly found the 

 eggs on the bare ground, varies from a few blades of grass, a few 

 feathers, or a few leaves, to a tolerably substantial pad-nest of 

 grass and leaves. It is usually placed on the ground, under some 

 large clod in a ploughed field, under a bush, or in a tuft of grass, 

 but is sometimes fixed in the lower branches of some dense thorny 

 shrub as much as three feet from the ground. Typically I should say 

 the nest was a shallow depression well concealed unde.v a bush or 

 in a large tuft of high grass, and more or less neatly and thickly 

 lined with grass. 



I have never found more than nine eggs, and I have more than 

 a dozen notes of finding only six, seven, or eight much-incubated 

 eggs. 



Mr. ~\V. Theobald furnishes the following note on the nidifica- 

 tion of this species in the neighbourhood of Piud Dadan Khan and 

 Katas in the Salt Eange : 



" Lay in the first week of April and in May and September. 

 Eggs, nine. Shape, ovato-pyriform. Size, 1'29 by 1*03. Colour, 

 clear cream-colour. Xest, a little grass in a hole in the ground, 

 usually sheltered by a bush, or in clumps of grass.*' 



Colonel G. F. L. Marshall writes from the Saharunpoor Dis- 

 trict : " The Grey Partridge breeds here from March till May. 

 I saw a covey of young birds about a week old about the middle 

 of April : again on 7th April I found seven fresh eggs, on the 

 23rd April I found eight slightly-set eggs, and on the 17th May I 

 again found seven slightly-set eggs. In one case the eggs were 

 laid on a rough platform of grass and leaves in the middle of a 

 tuft of surkery grass about 18 inches from the ground ; in a second 

 the egss were on the ground at the foot of a tuft of grass ; and in 

 the third case the eggs were in a cup-shaped hollow sunk in the 

 ground, lined very neatly with feathers and soft leaves, in the 

 middle of a little karouuda bush which was growing on the top of 

 a tiny mound. The eggs vary from milky white to a uniform 

 cafe-au-lait colour. The shell is very thick and rather rough." 



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