Introductions 
No attempts to introduce the imperial sandgrouse into new areas 
are recorded in the literature. 
Common Names 
This sandgrouse is so widely distributed that many names have been 
applied to it. Among the most commonly used are the following: sand 
grous (Old English); imperial sandgrouse (English); black~bellied sand- 
grouse (English); oriental sandgrouse (English); large sandgrouse (English) 
Ortega, Corteza (Spanish); Cortical (Portugal); koudri (Moorish); ganga 
unibande (French); sandflughuhn (German); ringflyghona (Swedish); step 
tavugu (Greek); bartluk, bagertlak (Turkish, Turkey, Iraq, Iran); katarr, 
Gata (Arabic); gutta (Arabic, Iraq, Iran); siya-sinah (Iranian); chur, 
katinga (Sindi, West Pakistan); banchur, kurmor (Peshawari, West Paki- 
stan); bhat-titur, bakht-titur (Hindi, India); boetoyhbin yephoopioxnnprook 
(Russian); and Steppe-hen (Russian translation). 
Distribution and Abundance 
Sa Ye 
The imperial sandgrouse is an inhabitant of the Mediterranean steppe, 
and desert climatic zones. The range of this species exhibits an inter- 
esting division into two widely divergent regions. Birds in the Iberian 
peninsula and northwestern Africa are separated by southern Europe, Libya, 
and Egypt fron the main concentrations in the Middle East, southwestern 
Siberia, Afghanistan, West Pakistan, and northwestern India (fig. 18). 
This separation probably took place rather recently since taxonomists 
have found no basis sufficient to indicate that the birds of western 
Europe and North Africa differ from those occurring in the Middle East. 
The range, including this gap, extends some 5,500 miles east to west 
and 2,500 miles north to south. 
Birds commonly winter in southern Spain, North Africa, the Middle 
East, southern Siberia, and the western part of the Indian subcontinent 
Bump observed wintering birds in southern Spain, southern Turkey, northern 
Iraq, Iran south of the Elburz mountains, and in middle West Pakistan. 
Baker (3), Christensen (14), and Bohl found large concentrations of 
imperial sandgrouse in the northwestern part of the Thar or Sind desert 
of Rajasthan, India, from December through February. Whittaker (45) 
reported both resident and migratory imperials in northern Morocco, 
Algeria, and Tunisia, largely south of the coast ranges of the Atlas 
Mountains. Bodenheimer (5) observed imperials in the south Syrian desert, 
about the Dead Sea, and in the Negeb. Meinertzhagen (26) located them 
wintering in considerable numbers in the arid wastes of northern and 
eastern Saudi Arabia. Dement'ev (15) quotes Zarudney (1915) (a) as 
(a) All references where the author and date of publication, rather than 
the reference number, are given are taken from Dement'ev (15) and are 
mentioned here to facilitate further identification of the source 
since translations of the original references are not available to us. 
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