Ill MMMUI 



Houbara macqueeni, J. E. Gray 8f Hardwicke. 



V©raaCTllar BTa&lOS. — [Tiloor, Houbara, Boombara, Punjab ; Taloor, (Sindi) 



Sind.] 



IS first day with the Houbara, if this happens to have 

 been, as mine was, in a part of the country where 

 they are plentiful, will always be remembered with 

 pleasure by the sportsman ; but after the novelty of 

 the thing has worn off, one is forced to admit that 

 the sport they yield is but poor, and that, when killed, 

 they form no such delicious contribution to the table 

 as does their near ally, the Bengal Florican. 



Throughout the plains portions of the Punjab, Rajputana 

 north* of the Arvalis, Northern Guzerat, Cutch, the 

 northern parts, at any rate, of Kathiawar and Sind, the 

 Houbara may be said to extend during the cold season, but 

 throughout the eastern and southern portions of the tract thus 

 defined they are mere occasional stragglers. I have known 

 specimens killed in Delhi, Gurgaon and Rohtak, and again a 

 single one in Bhurtpore, but I have only known of one being 

 met with east of the Jumna, and that was one I myself shot 

 in the Meerut district. It is in Bickaneer, Jodhpore, Sirsa, 

 Jeysulmere, and such like semi-desert country further west that 

 the Houbara really abounds, and here over a hundred may 

 sometimes be seen in a single day. 



In the stony plains of Afghanistan, as Hutton tells us, they 

 are common all the year round, and in the highlands there, as 

 in those of Beluchistan and Persia, they probably breed during 

 the summer, migrating to the lowlands, and vast numbers of 

 them beyond these into our Indian plains, during the cold 

 season. 



Throughout Persia it is common, and northwards, in the coun- 

 try between Yarkand and the Caspian, it occurs and breeds, but 

 westwards its range is as yet undefined. It has occurred as a 

 rare straggler in England and most of the northern and central 

 countries of Europe. A Houbara, but whether our bird or 

 the nearly allied African species (H. undiilata) is still uncertain, 

 occurs in Asia Minor, Armenia, Palestine and Arabia. Filippi, 



* Although I have never seen specimens thence, I have received fairly reliable 

 accounts of single specimens having been seen, south of the Arvalis, in the 

 northern parts of Oodeypore and Neemuch. 



