Vol, ze No. 9.] Note on the Houbara or Bastard Bustard. 449 
N.S.] 
- 08. 
e.8) 
Note on the Houbara or Bastard Bustard (Houbara Macqueeniz). 
— By Lirvr.-CotoneL C, Puuorr, Secretary to the Board 
of Examiners, Calcutta. 
The Arab name for the bird is hubara and hubarah: the 
names, the commonest being tlar: its other Panjab names 
kharmor, khanmor, and in the Kapurthala State tughdari.! 
some districts it is called gwrain and guraini, a name elsewhere 
-applied to the great Indian Bustard. 
The houbara is a winter visitor to India, and enters appar- 
-ently by all the passes on the N.-W. Frontier. Arab falconers of 
‘difficult quarry for a falcon than in the early winter months. 
On a first of April I saw two near Kohat, and on a first of May 
I hawked and killed one in Parachinar close to the Paiwar Kotal. 
‘The heaviest weight recorded by me is 43 lbs. — } 
Very occasionally a stray bird stays down in India during the 
hot weather. Two hot seasons running, I had continuous informa- 
tion of a single bird near Kohat—perhaps a wounded bird, or 
The houbara’s food is chiefly, but not entirely, vegetable. In 
the gram-producing district of Marwat, the seed is g nom 
-dry soil and left to be fertilized by the Xmas rains. The houber® 
that arrive in that part, pick out the grain from the ground, 
food of theirs. In Persia they do harm to the opium whee he 
the Dera Ghazi Khan district they eat the manna that 18 
1 Kuporthala falconers call the Great Tndian Bustard sent 
2 Thal; the sandy jungle districts of the Derajat are sv called. 
