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Pterocles senegalus, £tnn&
V e r n a c u l a r N a m e s . — [ Nandoo Katingo, Gutu, simt.]
ITHIN our limits, the Spotted Sand-Grouse is
only common in Sind and Jeysulmere, but it
straggles eastward of this into the Punjab,
Rajputana, Cutch, Northern Guzerat, and Northern
Kathiawar, in the neighbourhood of the
Runn; never, however, so far as I yet know, occurring
cast of the 730 E. Long. The most northerly
point from which I have received it is Shahpur on the Jhelum ;
the most southerly, Patri at the south-cast corner of the lesser
Runn, and Nawanagar in Northern Kathiawar. I have it from
Pokaran in Jodhpore and from the Liini near the borders of
Jodhpore and Balmir.
Except in the semi-desert portions of Sind, and possibly
Jeysulmere, it is only a cold weather visitant to India, and even
where, in Sind, some of the birds appear to be permanent
residents, the great majority of those met with in the winter
are, I believe, migrants.
Beyond our limits, this species occurs in suitable localities in
the plains of Khelat, along the Mckran Coast, in Mesopotamia,
Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, Nubia, and Somali Land, but curiously
enough it has not been recorded from Abyssinia, in the low
coast lands of which it must occur. In the Libyan desert,
and, Rtippell says, the coast of Barbary, and in the extreme south
of the Sahara, it also occurs, but it is very doubtful if it extends
so far west as Senegal, and if it does not, it would have, according
to a certain school of writers, to take Lichtenstein's name of
git ttat us.
NUMEROUS AS the Spotted Sand-Grouse are in certain localities
in Sind, they are, as a rule, only met with within a comparatively
narrow zone ; that within which the inundation tracts
abut on the dry uplands, and cultivation and desert inosculate.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the hills themselves,
I never saw them, except in parties, coming up for a few
minutes to drink at some perennial stream, close to where it