and breast.1 Another kind goes in small numbers to Kabul; H Ls very small, perhaps a little larger than the yellow wag-tail \qdrcha) 2; they call it qurdtn in Kabul.
The Indian bustard (P. kJtarc/ial)3 is another. It is about as large as the(T.)tiighddq {Otis tarda, the great bustard), and seems to be the tngkddq of Hindustan.4 Its flesh is delicious ; of some birds the leg is good, of others, the wing ; of the bustard all the meat is delicious and excellent.
The florican (P. chars) s is another. It is rather less than the tughdiri (Jtoubard)6 ; the cock's back is like the tiigkdiri's, and its breast is black. . The hen is of one colour.
The Hindustan sand-grouse (T. baghri-qara) 7 is another. It is smaller and slenderer than the baghri-qara [Pterocles arenarius] of those countries (Tramontana). Also its cry is sharper.
Of the birds that frequent water and the banks of rivers, one is the ding,8 an animal of great bulk, each wing measuring a qulack (fathom). It has no plumage (tiiqi) on head or neck ; a thing like a bag hangs from its neck ; its back is black; its breast is white. It goes sometimes to Kabul ; one year people brought one they had caught. It became very tame; if meat
' Perhaps Cotitrnix eoromandeliea, the black-breasted or rain quail, 7 inches long.
2 I'erhaps Motacilla cilreola, a yellow wag-tail which summers in Central Asia (Oales, ii, 298). If so, its Kabul name may refer to its flashing colour. Cf. E. D. Ross, I.e. No. 301; de Courteille's Dictionary which gives qareha, wag-tail, and Zenker's which fixes the colour.
J En/iodolis cdtoardsii ; Turk!, tughdar or tughdlri.
' Erskine noting (Mems. p. 321), that the bustard is common in the Dakkan where it is bigger than a turkey, says it is called tiighJAr and suggests that this is a corruption of tfighdaq. The uses of both words are shewn by Babur, here, and in the next following, account of the c/iarz. Cf. G. of I. i, 260 and E. D. Ross I.e. Nos. 36, 40.
5 Syfiheotis betigalcnsis and S. aurita, which are both smaller than Otis houbara (tiighdiri). In Hindustan .V. attrita is known as likh which name is the nearest approach I have found to Babur's [lit/a] li'tkha.
6 Jerdon mentions (ii, 615) that this bird is common in Afghanistan and there called dugdaor (ffigkdfir, tughdiri).
7 Cf. Appendix li, since I wrote which, further information has made it fairly safe to say that the Hindustan baghri-qara is Pterocles exitstus, the common sandgrouse and that the one of f. 49* is Pterocles arenarius, the larger or black-bellied sand-grouse. P. exustus is said by Yule (H. J. s.n. Rock-pigeon) to have been miscalled rock-pigeon by Anglo-Indians, perhaps because its flight resembles the pigeon's. This accounts for Erskine's rendering (p. 321) baghri-qara here by rockpigeon.
* Leploptilus dubius, Hind, hargita. Hindustanis call it fiir-i-diirg (ErsVine) and feda dhauk (Blanford), both names referring, perhaps, to its pouch. It is the adjutant of Anglo-India. Cf. f. 235.
