Porzana maruetta, Leach, 



Vernacular 



(Telegu) : 



ITaaaieS,— [ Klieyri, Gurguri-kheyri (Bengali) ; Venna mudi-kodi 

 Teerturuk, Kabul ; ] 



R. JERDON tells us that this species is found all over 

 India, and this, in a certain restricted sense, is perhaps 

 true ; but it is on the whole so rare a bird, of such 

 very retiring habits, and so very locally distributed, 

 that it is very difficult to say to what districts it 

 does or does not extend. 



I only know for certain of its occurrence in various 

 parts of the Deccan, in Guzerat, and the Panch Mahals, in vari- 

 ous parts of Rajputana, Sind, and the Punjab up to Peshawar 

 on the west, and again to Kotgarh and Rampur on the north 

 (both far in the interior of the Himalayas, but in the valley of 

 the Sutlej), in many parts of the North-Western Provinces 

 (including Bundelkhand), Oudh, and Bengal, in the Deltaic dis- 

 tricts of which latter, as about Calcutta, it is commoner than in 

 any other part of the Empire with which I am acquainted. 

 Blyth states that it has been sent from Aracan. 

 I cannot ascertain that it has been procured (though very like- 

 ly it may have been) in Ceylon or any part of the southern por- 

 tion of the Peninsula, in the eastern portions of the Madras 

 Presidency, Mysore, the Nizam's Territories, the Central Provinces 

 or Berar. Ball does not include it in his list " From the Ganges 

 to the Godavery." Mr. Blewitt, who worked Raipur and Sambal- 

 pur so exhaustively, never procured it there. There seems to be 

 no record of its occurrence in any part of Bengal east of the 

 Brahmaputra, or in Assam, and it does not, so far as we know, 

 extend to either Tenasserim or Pegu. 



Here again the evidence is so imperfect that no definite 

 assertions can be ventured ; but from the limited data available, 

 it would seem to me that this species, which is purely (I believe) 

 a cold-weather visitant to India, enters the Empire in two 

 streams. The one coming from the north from Yarkand and 

 Eastern Turkestan via Le, sweeps thence down the valleys of the 

 Jumna and Ganges, and occupies the North-Western Provinces, 

 Oudh, Bundelkhand and Lower Bengal (and birds of this stream 



