328 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXI. 



Distribution. — The Houbara is, so far as is yet known, only a 

 cold weather visitant to the Plains of India, being found through- 

 out the Punjab, Eajputana, Sind, Cutch and Northern Guzerat. 

 Gates defines its Eastern limit as a line drawn from Delhi on the 

 Jumna Kiver to Baroda, but Hume has recorded having shot one 

 himself in the Meerut District, east of the Jamna and doubtless 

 other occasional birds will be met with as far East as this bird. 



Outside India it is found in West Central Asia as far West as 

 Mesopotamia, whence it straggles commonly into South-Eastern 

 Europe and more rarely into Northern and Western Europe, as 

 far as the British Isles, Persia, Central Asia, as far South as 

 Afghanistan and Baluchistan Cthroughout the year) and the high- 

 lands of West and North-West China, breeding as close to Indian 

 limits as the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan and Baluchistan. 



The fact that our Indian Houbara has been so much confounded 

 with the African bird, Houbara undulata, has prevented many 

 persons from collecting specimens of the Houbara when met with 

 on the border lands of the two species and the dividing line 

 between the two has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. The 

 B. M. possesses so few specimens of either sort, except, for those 

 Indian killed specimens of Houbara macqueenii in the Hume 

 collection, that they do not much help in this respect. 



Dresser, in his " Palseartic Birds" gives the habitat of our bird 

 as " N.-W. India, Afghanistan, Persia, Central Asia ; a rare strag- 

 gler to Europe and has been met with in Germany, Poland, Finland, 

 Oland, Belgium, Holland and four times in Great Britain." 

 The African Houbara he gives as extending to Palestine and 

 Armenia. 



The Houbara arrives in India as early as the end of August, 

 Hume records the shooting of one on the 27th of August and 

 Butler records the arrival on the oOth of that month. The latter 

 however, says : " The end of August is exceptionally early for their 

 arrival. The main body do not appear until about the first week 

 in October. A few pairs were breeding at Henjam, Persian Gulf 

 at the beginning of April, 1877." Butler's record refers to Northern 

 Gvizerat and in the Northern Punjab they are reported to arrive at 

 much the same time ; a few stragglers appear in early September 



