POEZANA. 395 



Porzana pusilla (Pall.). Pallas's CraJce. 



Porzana pygmaea (Naumi), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 723. 



Zapornia pygmsea (Naum.), Hume, Rough Draft N. ^ E. no. 910. 



Pallas's Crake is pretty generally distributed throughout India, 

 alike in the plains and the hills, up to 4000 or 5000 feet, except 

 in Sind. It is not very common anywhere in the plains, and is 

 perhaps at times mistaken for a Quail. It is of much the same 

 size, looks on the ■wing of much the same colour, and takes short 

 flights over the rushes, and drops suddenly just like a Quail. 

 Somehow it is certainly, as a rule, overlooked, and, so far as I 

 know, Mr. Brooks and myself were the first persons who obtained 

 the eggs in India. 



This species lays in July, August, and September in the plains of 

 Upper India, and in June and July in Cashmere and the valleys in 

 the lower ranges of the Himalayas containing suitable rice-swamps 

 or marshy pools. It is pretty common near Syree, below Simla. 

 The full number of eggs is, I believe, eight, as we found the frag- 

 ments of this number of shells round a nest that had hatched off. 

 Six is the greatest number of eggs that I have yet obtained, but 

 then I have only seen two nests with eggs. The nest is made of 

 rush and weed, completely concealed in water-grass, wild rush, and 

 the like, and is apparently usually placed very little above the 

 water-level. 



At the Achulda Jheel, Zillah Etawah, Mr, Brooks and I took a 

 nest of this bird containing three fresh eggs on August 16th, 1867. 

 The nest was of rush and weed in the midst of grass and wild rice, 

 very little above the water's surface. The eggs were oval, rather 

 glossy, of a pale olive-brown, thickly mottled and blurred with 

 specks, spots, and blotches (most numerous at the large ends) of 

 a darker shade of olive-brown and of a sort of purplish brown. 



At Syree, below Simla, at an elevation of about 4000 feet, I 

 found a precisely similar nest in amongst dense rushes and sedges 

 on the margin of a small swampy pond encircled by rice-fields. 

 This was on the 19th June. This nest contained six deeply-set 

 eggs. Next year in July we found no less than three similar nests 

 in the same place, all unfortunately just hatched off. 



Colonel Butler writes : — " Six fresh eggs of this Crake were 

 brought to me, -on the 26th of September 1876, from Milana, 18 

 miles east of Deesa. They were taken by one of my own nest-seekers 

 in a small clump of bulrushes growing in a tanlr, and the nest, 

 which he pointed out to me on the following day, was built in the 

 rushes 3 or 4 feet above the level of the water, and looked for all 

 the world like a miniature nest of Q. cliloropvs, being composed of 

 the same material (sedge and rush) and constructed in exactly the 

 same manner. The eggs are much in size and shape like Eain- 

 Quail's eggs." 



The egg of Pallas's Crake is oval, slightly pointed towards one 

 end ; the shell of a firm and compact texture, and with a slight 

 gloss. The ground-colour is a sort of a pale olive stone-colour, or very 

 slightly greenish drab, thickly freckled and mottled with faint 



