ni rami tmmuiKL 



Pterocles fasciatus, Scopoli. 



Vernacular Names.— [Pahan bhut-titur, Bhut-bun, North-Western Provinces; 

 Palki, Belgaum ; Handeri, Southern India ; Kal Gowjal haki, (Kanarese), 

 Mysore; Sonda polanka, (Telugu.)] 



LTHOUGH the Painted Sand-Grouse, to my mind the 

 most beautiful of the genus, is widely distributed 

 throughout India, it is very local in its distribution, 

 and is chiefly found, so far as my experience goes, on 

 and about the bases and in the neighbourhood of 

 dry, low, rocky, bush-clad or sparingly-wooded 

 hills. 



In parts of the country, however, I have found it affecting 

 the high kkeyras, or mounds of deserted villages, met with in 

 many jungles, and there are forest tracts in which the ground is 

 stony and a good deal broken up by ravines in which it is 

 particularly abundant. 



It is, of course, entirely unknown in low, rich, unbroken alluvial 

 plains, in the major portion of the North- Western Provinces, for 

 instance, the whole of Lower and Eastern Bengal and Assam, 

 and equally so on the Malabar Coast and the extreme south of 

 the Peninsula and Ceylon. 



Generally, I think it may be said to occur in localities such as 

 I have above described throughout India Proper, north of the 

 12° N. Lat, and west of the 8$° E. Long. 



Southwards, it extends at least as far as Chitaldroog and 

 Tumkur in Mysore, eastwards to Sirguja and Palamow in Chota 

 Nagpore, and northwards, at any rate as a straggler, to Attock 

 and even Hazara, where, in 1863, Mr. Greig shot a pair on the 

 banks of the Indus at Darban in the Amb country. 



Although very common in Bundelkhand and to the south of 

 Mirzapur, the real home of the species appears to me to lie in 

 the so-called Mewat Hills, and their continuation, the Aravalis, 

 which run down in a wide curve from Delhi, through Ajmere to 

 Mount Abu, a broad straggling belt, or series of belts, of stony 

 ridges and detached barrow-like mounds. 



So far as is yet known, the Painted Sand-Grouse is exclusively 

 Indian, and does not even extend into Sind, Khelat, or Kabul. 



