318 GLAREOLrD^. 



Family GLAREOLID^. 



Glareola pratincola (Linn.). The Collared Pratincole. 



Glareola pratincola {Linn.'), Hume, Cat. no. 842 bis. 



Mr. Scrope Doig found the eggs of this Pratincole in Sind. He 

 says : — " On the 4th May I came across a lot of birds which were 

 new to me, and so I shot some to identify ; from the persistent 

 way in which the others kept liying round and round I concluded 

 that they must be breeding, and on searching for their nests I found 

 some half dozen all empty, and so thought that they were beginning 

 to lay. I accordingly left the place, and returned on the 7th, when 

 I found after searching about that what I had taken for new nests 

 were really old ones, the place round about being covered with the 

 broken egg-shells ; however, by patient searching I collected over 

 fifty eggs. The breeding-ground was about 15 acres in extent 

 (the actual portion where most of the nests were was only about 

 an acre), and was a salt plain with patches of coiu-se sedge here and 

 there on it, the whole being surrounded by dense tamarisk and 

 rush jungle, and was situated about half a mile from the bank of 

 the Narra. The nests were slight hollows scraped in the ground, 

 and were generally situated close to where the soil had been rooted 

 up by wild pigs, or in the centre or by the side of a lump of dried 

 cowdung : this latter was the favourite situation. The greatest 

 number of eggs in any nest was three. This seemed to be the normal 

 number, but some contained only two, and one had a single egg and 

 one young one just hatched. I shot several specimens,which I have 

 preserved and sent to Mr. Hume for identification along with their 

 eggs. I also found Cursorius coromandelicus and L. indica breeding 

 in the same place. These birds have a most peculiar habit of lying 

 stretched on the ground with their wings spread out ; they not 

 only did this while I was visible searching for their eggs, but when 

 I had disappeared and lay hid in the dense jungle I saw them 

 through my glasses going through the same antics ; as far as I could 

 judge, it was done when any other birds approached the nest or 

 young, and was evidently a sign of anger. Two birds which I 

 shot while thus extended were both males. The ground-colour of 

 the eggs is a light dirty green in some, in others a drab, covered all 

 over with dark purple blotches, denser in some than in others and 

 sometimes forming a zone at the broader end ; some are in shape 

 broad ovals, others nearly spherical : they vary in length from 1-1 

 to 1'35, and from -80 to 1-05 in width, the average of fifty-two 

 eggs being 1'46 in length and "95 in width." 



The eggs of this species are really not separable from those of 

 (?. orientalis, and no separate description of them is therefore 

 necessary. They vary in size from 1-04 to 1-29 in length, and 

 from 0-82 to 0-98 in breadth. 



