Northwards of the Mediterranean it has wanderedat times into
Greece, Malta, and perhaps Sicily, and is not uncommon in suitable
localities in Portugal, Spain, and Southern France, while
stragglers have been obtained in Northern France, and a sinele
specimen, it is said, in Hanover.
OF ALL the Sand-Grouse that inhabit or visit India, and half
the known species do this, none habitually associate in such
enormous flocks as the Pintail docs during the cold season.
Near Mardan, I have seen flocks of at least ten thousand, and
in Northern Sind I know that they similarly occur at times
in countless numbers. So, too, at Bushire and in Mesopotamia,
I know from trustworthy observers of their being repeatedly observed,
and always in gigantic packs.*
I have seen very little of this species myself, and only on a
vast plain some miles from Hoti Mardan where, during the winter,
they were in tens of thousands. This plain is partly barren,
partly fallow, and partly cultivated with wheat, mustard, and
the like. It was only on the barren and fallow land that I saw
them. They were extremely wary, and it was only by creeping
up a nala or small ravine that it was possible to get within
even a long shot of them. Their flight is extremely rapid and
powerful, to mc it seemed more so than that of any of
their congeners. They are very noisy birds, and whether seated
or flying, continually utter their peculiar cry, which, though
somewhat of the same character as that of arenarius, is unmistakcably
distinct from the call note of any of the other
species.
Those I shot, and, according to their account, most of the
large series previously shot by my collectors, had fed entirely on
green leaves, seeds, small pulse, and grain of different kinds.
The gizzards contained quantities of small stones. There were
several pools and places where the rain floods had not quite
dried up, on the plain I have referred to, and the birds seemed
to sit about much in their immediate neighbourhood.
One or two of my birds were very fat, so much so that it
was difficult to skin them, but, as a rule, when cooked they
were as dry and tasteless as the rest of the Sand-Grouse.
I was told that they were occasionally hawked with
Shahccns, but their flight is so rapid and powerful that I
should doubt much sport being obtained this way. I was also
told that they could be shot by working a couple of Peregrines
over them, when tlicy allow a very close approach and almost
refuse to rise.
They are easily caught in horse-hair nooses, as I myself saw.
They leave the Punjab, I understand, by the end of March
or early in April, and do not of course breed with us.
* It has been surmised that this species was the " Quail" of the Israelites.
THE PINTAILED SAND-GROUSE. 79
SEVERTSOFF TELLS us that they breed in the Tian Shan and
Karatall ranges, at elevations of from 1,000 to 4,000 feet. I
have seen eggs collected near Smyrna. Salvin, in his "Five
months Bird Nesting in the Atlas," says :—"The extensive sandy
plains, termed the Harakta, of which El Tharf is one of the
largest, are the only localities in which we met with this Sand-
Grouse. It makes no nest, but scrapes a slight hollow in the
sand, in which it deposits its three eggs. These are laid in
May, the young being hatched about the second week in June.
The only species of Pterocles which occur in these elevated
districts arc P. alchata and P. arenarius."
Canon Tristram, in his " Notes on the Ornithology of N.
Africa," remarks :—" Though this bird does not approach so near
the verge of cultivation northwards as arenarias, it is far more
generally abundant, and continues to occur in vast flocks in
winter in the M'zah and Touarick country, where I never saw
P. arenarius.
" Its breeding habits are exactly like those of P. arenarius ;
but its egg is of a much richer fawn-coloured tint, covered, and
sometimes zoned, with large maroon red blotches, while that
of the other is of a paler hue, with obsolete pale brown
blotches."
The eggs are, of course, of the usual type, elongated somewhat
cylindrical ovals, with stout glossy shells. Dresser describes
eggs that he had received from Algeria and Spain as
'' warm clay coloured or stone ochre, with a faint reddish cream
tinge, marked with faint purplish grey underlying shell-markings
and dark reddish brown surface spots and blotches scattered
tolerably closely over the surface of the egg," and measuring
from 17 to 1'97 in length, and from i'22 to i'25 in breadth.
THE MALES in this species are somewhat larger, and average
decidedly heavier than the females.
Males.—Length, 14 to 15'5 ; expanse, 24 to 26 ; wing, yg6
to 8'5 ; tail from vent, 5 to 7 ; tarsus, ro to I-I3. Weight
10 to 12 ozs.
Females.—Length, 13-5 to 15; expanse, 24 to 25; wings,
7-5 to 8' 15 ; tail from vent, 375 to 6; tarsus, 097 to ri2.
Weight, 8'25 to ii'25 ozs.
The feet are dirty or dusky green, in one specimen yellowish
; the irides are brown ; the bill varies in colour somewhat,
and I have recorded it in different specimens, as " dusky
green," " greenish brown," " brown," " dark brown," " slate
colour."
THE PLATE would really be perfect for a chromo, had the
feet not been wrongly coloured, I have never seen a specimen