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Pterocles alchata, Linni.
Vernacular Names.-[None? 1
COLD weather visitant only to our Empire, the Pintailed
Sand-Grouse does little more than just cross
our western frontier.
It is only Trans-Indus, in Northern and Central
Sind and the Punjab, that it is at all an abundant
or regular visitant, but it occurs as an isolated straggler,
from time to time, a good deal further east, and
I have received specimens from near Kurrachee, from the Punjab
from as far east as near Delhi, and from Rajputana
from as far east as the Sambhar Junction.
Outside our present limits, the Pintailed Sand-Grouse occurs
in Eastern Afghanistan and Khelat; whether it does so in the
western portions of these provinces is still uncertain. It has not
been observed in Southern Beluchistan, nor on the Persian plateau,
and, despite what Mr. Dresser says, Mr. Blanford never saw it in any
part of Persia that he visited. Only at Bushire, Major St John
noticed that it appeared in enormous flocks for a few days in
March, migrating, but whither he could not discover. Of course
it occurs in North-Western Persia, Tabriz way, but that is in a
distinct zoological province, to which I shall return. North of
the Persian plateau (though it does not apparently extend
into Eastern Turkistan, late the territory of the Ataligh Ghazi),
it occurs pretty well throughout Western Turkestan to the Caspian.
Westwards, it is common along the Caucasus, and southwards
into North-Western Persia and Armenia ; is found in countless
myriads during the cold season in Mesopotamia (Turkish
Arabia), and has been recorded from various places in Asia
Minor (in parts of which, as near Smyrna, it is known to breed),
and Palestine, North of the Caucasus, it straggles into Southern
Russia.
That it occurs in Arabia Proper there can be little doubt,
but of the fact I find no record. Westwards, again, it does not
appear to occur in Egypt, Nubia, or Abyssinia, but westwards
of Egypt it occurs (though irregularly distributed) in suitable
localities along the whole of North and North-Western Africa,
and there are vague indications of specimens having been
actually obtained at the Canaries.