Pander's Ground Jay

Pander’s Ground Jay 

(Podoces panderi), a bird of the family Corvidae with a body length of approximately 25 cm. The upper part of the body is ash gray, the abdomen is pinkish, the wings are white and black, and the tail is black. Like other birds of the genus Podoces, Pander’s ground jay runs well and flies poorly. It is distributed in the deserts of Middle Asia and southern Kazakhstan. The bird lives in dunes and hilly sands with sparse shrubbery and feeds on insects, small lizards, and seeds of desert plants. Pander’s ground jay builds its cumbersome, roofed nest on a shrub reaching a height of 1.5 m. A clutch contains four to six greenish, speckled eggs, which are incubated by the female for 17 to 19 days. The young leave the nest after 15 or 16 days, still unable to fly, and follow their parents on the ground.