TSE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 21 



Mr. A. Anderson found them breeding in a curious place "a plain 

 covered from miles with reli (a saline effervescence) which gave the 

 ground the appearance of being carpeted with thick snow " on this 

 ground he flushed a Sand-Grouse from^ pair of eggs and he goes 

 on to note " my camp being close to this place, I amused myself 

 in watching the birds incubating, feeding, round about their nest 

 and dusting themselves after the fashion of fowls. On the 4th as I 

 approached the nest, the bird glided off", and skulked away in a 

 crouching position, so as to avoid detection and then squatted.'" 



Incubation appears in India to extend over 16 or 17 days but 

 may vary more than this according to the time of j^ear in which 

 they are laid. Mr. Meade Waldo who has been successful in rearing 

 these birds in captivity reports (Avicultural Magazine, March 1913), 

 that eggs layed in April were not hatched until the 23rd day, where- 

 as others laid in July were hatched in 18-19 daj^s. 



In this article Mr. Meade Waldo writes " The procedure of these 

 birds is precisely the same as the Greater Pintailed Sand-Grouse 

 (Pterodes alchata), viz., the female incubates by day, the male by 

 night, and the male soaks his breast with water for the young to 

 drink or rather suck." 



As regards their eggs I have but a poor series and can add 

 nothing to what Hume has recorded in " Game Birds." Here he 

 describes them as follows : 



" The eggs, like those of all other Sand-Grouse, are long and 

 cylindrical, like those of a Night Jar. The texture is fine and 

 smooth and they have generally a fine gloss. Not only in shape, 

 but in marking also, do many of them strongly resemble those of 

 some species of Night Jar. The ground colour varies much ; in 

 some it is a pale, somewhat pinkish stone colour, in others greyish 

 or dingy or greenish white ; in some pale cafe-au-lait, in others a 

 somewhat light olive brown. Typically they are thickly spotted, 

 streaked or irregularly blotched, pretty uniformly over the whole 

 surface with two sets of markings, the one of darker or lighter shades 

 of olive brown, the other a sort of pale inky purple, and these latter, 

 which are most commonly streaks and clouds, seem to underline the 

 others. Different eggs vary much in the distribution, size and 

 intensity of these markings, as also in the relative proportion of the 

 extent of surface covered respectively with what I may call the 

 primary and secondary markings ; in some almost the whole ground 

 colour not occupied by the primary markings is clouded with the 

 pale inky purple, in others only here and there a few spots of this 

 colour are traceable; in some all the markings are small, very 

 thickly set and freckled, in others they are bold, large, eccentrically 

 shaped blotches, comparatively thinly distributed over the surface. 

 Some of the eggs are, as a whole, very much darker coloured than 

 others, and in some the ground colour might perhaps be best 



