DROMOLAA PICATA.
Pied Stone-Chat.

Sawicola picata, Blyth, Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., vol. xvi. p. 131.—Id., Cat. of Birds in Mus. Asiat. Soc. Calcutta,
p- 167.—Gray & Mitch. Gen. of Birds, vol. iii. App. p. 8, pp. to p. 179.—Bonap. Consp. Gen. Av.,
tom. i. p. 304, Sawicola, sp. 17.—Horsf. & Moore, Cat. of Birds in Mus. East-Ind. Comp., vol. i.
p. 287.—Jerd. Birds of India, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 131.

 

Tus is one of the largest and most conspicuously marked of the Stone-Chats inhabiting the peninsula of India.
It belongs to that section of the group to which the generic name of Dromolea has been applied, and differs
from most of the other species in the whiteness of its abdomen. It is said to be an inhabitant of the Upper
Provinces of India, Scinde, and Afghanistan ; from one of the two last-mentioned countries, I possess
examples which were collected at Ghuznee by my son, the late Dr. J. H. Gould.

While I have little doubt that the two hinder figures in the accompanying Plate, one with a black and the
other with a clouded throat, have reference to the same species, I am not so certain about the figure in the
brown dress ; it may be a female or a young bird of either sex, or the female of another species ; and if so,
the figure with a clouded throat is that of a young male.

“The Pied Stone-Chat,” says Mr. Jerdon, “has been found in the Upper Provinces of India, in Sindh,
and in Afghanistan. Adams observed it in Sindh, frequenting gardens, and also in the Punjab. It is pro-
bably only a winter visitant. He did not meet with it in the Western Himalayas.”

The male has the abdomen, upper and under tail-coverts, the base of the two central and the basal four-
fitths of the lateral tail-feathers white, the remainder of the plumage being black ; irides dark brown; bill
and feet black.

The young male or female differs in having those parts brown which are black in the other sex, and in
having the abdomen washed with vinous.

In another state, represented in the front figure of the Plate, which may be characteristic of the true
female, or perhaps of another bird, the whole of the parts described as black in the male are of a lively
brown, and the under parts of a pale greyish brown.

The figures are of the natural size.