Ortygornis pondicerianus (Gmel.).
The Grey Partridye.

Ortygornis ponticeriana (Gm.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 569; Hume, Bough Draft N. & E. no. 822.

The Grey Partridge is found and breeds throughout the more open and drier plains country of India Proper. It eschews equally the more humid tracts of Lower Bengal, the Dboons and Terais that skirt the bases of the Himalayas, and the dense forests and forest-clad hills of Southern, Central, and Eastern India.

It lays from February to June, by far the most eggs being met with in April, and again from September to November. In all these months I have myself taken eggs, but comparatively very few in the autumn ; and I have been unable to make out whether the eggs then found are a second laying of hens that have already laid in the spring, or whether they are only laid by birds that, Owing to some accident, have had no spring broods.

The nest, when there is one, for I have repeatedly found the eggs on the bare ground, varies from a few blades of grass, a few feathers, or a few leaves, to a tolerably substantial pad-nest of grass and leaves. It is usually placed on the ground, under some large clod in a ploughed field, under a bush, or in a tuft of grass, but is sometimes fixed in the lower branches of some dense thorny shrub as much as three feet from the ground. Typically I should say the nest was a shadow depression well concealed under a bush or in a large tuft of high grass, and more or less neatly and thickly lined with grass.

I have never found more than nine eggs, and I have more than a dozen notes of finding only six, seven, or eight much-incubated eggs.

Mr. W. Theobald furnishes the following note on the nidification of this species in the neighbourhood of Find Dadan Khan and Katas in the Salt Range ; -

" Lay in the first week of April and in May and September. Eggs, nine. Shape, ovato-pyriform. Size, 1.29 by 1.03. Colour, clear cream-colour. Nest, a little grass in a hole in the ground, usually sheltered by a bush, or in clumps of grass."

Colonel G. F. L. Marshall writes from the Saharunpoor District ; - " The Grey Partridge breeds here from March till May. I saw a covey of young birds about a week old about the middle of April; again on 7th April I found seven fresh eggs, on the 23rd April I found eight slightly-set eggs, and on the 17th May I again found seven slightly-set eggs. In one case the eggs were laid On a rough platform of grass and leaves in the middle of a tuft of surkery grass about 18 inches from the ground ; in a second the eggs were on the ground at the foot of a tuft of grass ; and in the third case the eggs were in a cup-shaped hollow sunk in the ground, lined very neatly with feathers and soft leaves, in the middle of a little karouuda bush which was growing on the top of a tiny mound. The eggs vary from milky white to a uniform cafe-au-lait colour.   The shell is very thick and rather rough."

Major C. T. Bingham remarks:- " Breeds commonly at Delhi in March and April. Nest, a few straws placed in some hollow under shade of a tuft of grass."

The late Mr. A. Anderson wrote :- " The Grey Partridge lays from six to nine eggs in April and May; the eggs are deposited in a hollow, which the birds scrape out, most generally under the shelter of a clump of scrub jungle, and the standing grass is trodden dow^n, which does for a nest-lining.

" On the 4th April, 1871, when out coursing on the chur lands opposite the Station of Futtehgurh, I flushed a ' Grey' which was feeding in an open field. It struck me at once that this was the male, and that the female must be sitting somewhere, because these birds invariably go in pairs, and this was their breeding-season. Forming a line with my coolies, I beat every conceivable bit of cover (there was not a crop standing for miles), including a few clumps of sarpat grass which grew in the form of a hedge. Giving it up as a bad job, I rode alongside of this grass hedge (it had been charred), and looking down into the centre of each clump, soon discovered what at first appeared a hare in her form, but which on closer inspection proved to be the hen partridge. The grass was again well beaten, and, as a last resort, handfuls of earth and small stones were showered in on her from above, but without avail. Seeing how futile were all my efforts to flush the Partridge, I decided on capturing her on her nest, which was effected by my horse-clothing being placed over the clump, and the coolies making a rattling noise round the bottom of the grass, which eventually had the effect of making her rise perpendicularly. The nest was carefully fenced in with grass-stalks, of the thickness of an ordinary cane, so that ingress and egress for so big a bird must have been a matter of no little difficulty. A portion of the stalks having been cut away disclosed nine eggs; eight were hard-set, and gave me a deal of trouble to make them into good specimens, the ninth was abnormally small and quite fresh, measuring only .8 X .6.

Mr. J. Aitken remarks that " the Grey Partridge breeds in Berar in the beginning of the _year. I have only once found the nest, but broken egg-shells may not infrequently be found lying on the ground. The nest was of grass; it was well concealed under a bush, and contained six eggs of a creamy-yellow colour ; as they were perfectly fresh, more might possibly have been laid. This was in the month of February. The birds nest - I may say, live - always in the vicinity of water, their favourite haunt being babool-jungle growing by the side of a stream, from which they come out morning and evening into the fields to feed."

Dr. Jerdon says that " this Partridge breeds chiefly in the dry weather, from February to May or June, the hen bird laying usually eight or ten eggs of a cream or stone colour, under a hedgerow or thick bush."

Colonel Butler tells us that in the neighbourhood of Deesa this Partridge breeds in February, March, and April, and again in August, September, and October, and that at Belgaum he took nests in December and February.

In Ceylon this bird breeds twice a year, in August and December.

The eggs vary in shape from slightly elongated ovals, a good deal pointed towards one end, to broad pegtops, but an intermediate form is the most common. The shells are fine and glossy, and the eggs average decidedly smaller than those of our Common English Partridge. Their colouring too is of an entirely different type, and is the same as that of the eggs of the Bush-Quails, while that of the English Partridge in this respect more resembles those of the Francolins. The eggs are white, more or less tinged with cafe-au-lait colour, this tinge varying much in depth and intensity, probably (though I have not accurately noted the fact) chiefly according to the stage of incubation at which they are procured. The eggs are spotless, but are often, especially the paler-coloured ones, a good deal soiled and stained. I have never, out of some hundreds that I have seen, met with an egg that could be rightly called milky white.

In size the eggs vary from 1.2 to 1.42 in length, and in breadth from 0.95 to 4.12 ; but the average of fifty-four eggs is 1.3 by 1.03.