184 Contributions to the Ornithology of India, 8fc. 



out in the water near the junction of the Ravee and Chenab^ and 

 again in a very similar locality near the junction of the Chenab 

 and the Sutlej. With these exceptions I never saw the bird 

 except on dunds as the Sindh broads are locally designated. In 

 all these where the water was as it were paved with the leaves of 

 the lotus and sing-hara (Trapa Bispinosa) and dotted over with 

 tiny clumps or single stems of reeds, and flowering grasses, the 

 white-tailed chat might be seen perched sideways on one of 

 these wind-swayed reeds, every now and then darting down on 

 to one of the lotus leaves, seizing some insect there and returning 

 to its previous perch, instantly recognizable when on the wing 

 by the great amount of w^hite in the tail. 



Outside the high-water mark, I never saw a single specimen ; 

 twenty yards from the water's edge, rubicola was abundant,, 

 but leucura was never once seen. I know that this is scarcely in 

 accordance with Dr. Jerdon's experience elsewhere, but I paid 

 particular attention to this species, never having before seen it. 

 I shot a very great number both of it and rubicola, and in the 

 whole of Sindh, I never once succeeded in obtaining a single 

 specimen of leucura really well outside high-water mark, while 

 inside, they abounded on every large inland piece of water, 

 being often, as in the Munchur Lake, two or three miles away 

 from the nearest dry land. The males are as like ruhicola 

 as they can possibly be, except as regards the tail, which 

 has the central feathers a paler brown than those of ruhi- 

 cola, margined conspicuously with yellowish white, and the 

 whole of the rest of the tail white, except the tips of the feathers 

 on both webs which are pale brown, with a somewhat darker 

 brown stripe running up the shafts for from half to two-thirds 

 of their length. Perhaps, on the whole, the breast is also paler. 

 The females are excessively close to those of ruhicola, and in fact 

 are scarcely separable from them except by the pale hue of 

 all the lateral tail feathers, and the more conspicuous pale 

 margins of all the tail feathers. 



489. — Dromolaea picata, Blyth. 490. Saxicola 



capistrata, Gould. 



I have already in " Stray Feathers" Vol. 1, p. 3, recorded my 

 conviction of the identity of these two supposed species, and I 

 shall here deal with them as identical.'* They abound through- 

 out the whole western Punjab, and in Sindh to the very foot of 



* Mr. Gray, I see, actually puts capisfraia under Saxicola and picata under 

 Dromolaea ! but accidents like this will occur ; an equally great authority, but 

 in another branch. Ichthyology, has placed the young and old of the same fish in 

 different families. •; 



