THE COMMON SAND-GROUSE. 75 



Nowshera) in the months of May and June, usually on barren 

 arid ground, the heat of which is terrible at that time of year. 

 I have frequently found the eggs with their albumen semi- 

 coagulated from the heat, and I fancy that, if the bird left its 

 eggs for any time during the heat of the day, they would be 

 baked ! 



" They lay three eggs, blunt at both ends. There is no nest 

 to speak of, only a bit of stick or two." 



Mr. A. Anderson remarks : "The Common Sand-Grouse breed 

 throughout the Doab in March, April, and May (and no doubt 

 later on), laying the orthodox number of three eggs, and never 

 four, as stated by Jerdon. As a rule, there is no attempt at any- 

 thing like a nest, the eggs being deposited in a slight depression 

 on the bare ground scraped out by the birds, most frequently 

 in an extensive plain, 



"At times they lay only a pair of eggs. On the 2nd March 

 1873, when roaming over a plain covered for miles with reh* 

 which gave the ground the appearance of being carpeted with 

 crisp snow, I flushed a Sand-Grouse which flew up perpendicularly 

 out of sight. Looking down, I found a pair of eggs, which were 

 laid parallel to each other in a slight hollow, sparingly lined 

 with dry grass stems. My camp being close to this place, I 

 amused myself in watching the birds incubating, feeding round 

 about their nest, and dusting themselves after the fashion of 

 fowls. On the 4th (there being still only two), I removed the 

 eggs, shooting the sitting bird, which proved to be the male* 

 As I approached the nest, the bird glided off, and skulked away 

 in a crouching posture, so as to avoid detection, and then 

 squatted. 



" On the 19th October last, my friend Mr. Hastings took a 

 clutch of eggs at Etawah, which he sent to me ; these eggs were 

 either unusually late or early, as the case may be." 



" In the Deccan," writes Mr. Davidson, " it breeds from Decem- 

 ber to June, eggs having been found by me in all the intervening 

 months. I have never found more than three, or less than two, 

 eggs, and three is the general number." 



The eggs, like those of all the other Sand-Grouse, are long and 

 cylindrical, like those of a Night Jar. The texture is fine and 

 smooth, and they have generally a fine gloss. Not only in shape, 

 but in markings also, do many of them strongly resemble those of 

 some species of Night Jar. The ground colour varies much ; in 

 some it is a pale somewhat pinkish stone colour, in others greyish 

 or dingy greenish white ; in some pale cafe au lait, in others a 

 somewhat light olive brown. Typically they are thickly spotted, 

 streaked, or irregularly blotched, pretty uniformly over the 

 whole surface, with two sets of markings, the one of darker or 

 lighter shades of olive brown, the other a sort of pale inky 



* A saline efflorescence, of varying composition. 



