50 THE LARGE OR BLACK-BELLIED SAND-GROUSE.
circling flight and settling pretty nearly at the spot they rose
from. You will also, especially if it is late in the season and the
morning young, observe, as a rule, a vast amount of skirmishing
going on between the males ; not regular fights, but a series
of pecks delivered, and perhaps a little hustle. I watched a
large flock once from a distance of perhaps a hundred yards
from behind a sand hill, and it seemed to me that no two
males came within a foot of each other without coming to blows
in a mild way.
Every one in India knows the peculiar clucking note of this
and the Common Sand-Grouse, but I really do not know how to
put it on paper.
As to food, I have been often assured that they eat insects
freely. I can only say that I have examined the stomachs of
scores without ever finding anything in them beyond small
seeds and grains of various kinds and little pieces of grass and
herbs. On one or two occasions I have, no doubt, seen a
single ant or tiny beetle, but these were, I believe, picked up
by accident along witb some seed or other and swallowed
involuntarily. There are always, or almost always, small stones,
usually quartz pebbles, in the stomach ; sometimes only one
or two, sometimes a great number.
As I have already said, I do not think that the Large Sand-
Grouse breeds with us, but it may do so on some of the moderately
elevated plateaux of Kabul or Khclat, and it certainly
breeds on the Persian plateau, at from four to seven thousand
feet elevation, and at similar altitudes in Western Turkestan.
Further west it seems to breed in all the countries already
referred to in defining its range.
It lays, probably early in June, three eggs (as exitstus docs)
in some slight depression in the soil. The eggs, Tristram says,
are placed two in a line, and one outside them, but I doubt whether
there can be any invariable rule on this point, as I have
found those of exustus in all kinds of positions. Of the eggs,
Dresser says :—" In shape they are oval, rather elongated, tapering
equally towards each end, and in colour arc light stone-colour
or buff, more or less marbled with very indistinct purplish grey
under-lying shell-markings and light brown over-lying surface
blotches, which latter in some specimens are drawn in fantastical
shapes ; and in most of the eggs the dark markings are
more or less collected round one end. In size they vary from
I'8S by i'3 to 2 inches by 135."
No doubt they are elongated, cylindrical eggs, varying much
in ground colour and in the amount and intensity of markings.
One I saw, collected I believe by Dr Tristram, had a dull, pale
fawn coloured ground, and was profusely mottled and blotched
with two shades of a pale somewhat rufous brown and purplish
dusky.
THE LARGE OR BLACK-BELLIED SAND-GROUSE, 51
THIS SPECIES does not vary very much in size. I have measured
and weighed a very large number with the following
results :—
Males.—Length, 1375 to 1475 ; expanse, 27 to 30; wing,
p/O to 9/9 ; tail from vent, 4 to 5 ; tarsus, IT to I'2S ; bill from
gape, C 6 4 to 0'8. Weight, lib to lib. 4 ozs.
Females.—Length, I3'38 to I 4 ' 3 7 ; expanse, 27'38 to 28^5 ;
wing, 87 to 9-4 ; tail, 4 T 3 to 4 T 5 ; tarsus, r o to IT. Weight,
15 ozs to 17 ozs.
The feet and the back of the tarsi are grey, in some an
earthy grey, in some pale French grey, or pale plumbeous, or
dark greyish plumbeous; the claws darker and horny; the irides
are brown ; edges of eyelids pale lemon ; the bill is pale bluish
grey, or pale plumbeous, often darker, sometimes blackish,
at the tip.
THE PLATE, held at a little distance, is as good a representation
of the bird as could be desired. In the majority of specimens,
however, the buffy portions of the plumage are lighter
and yellower and less rufous than in the specimens figured, but
the birds vary much in this respect.
I cannot say much for the queer little figure in the background,
which is intended to represent a young male ; like the
female, but with the spots on the breast already partly obliterated
by the coming grey of the mature plumage.