r.9r, JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XII. 



rather drawn in, the feathers nearly always more or less ruffled up, the 

 barred Hank plumes over and outside the wings, their whole outline being 

 very round and ball-like. When not alarmed they pace about in a very 

 slow and deliberate fashion, now and then picking up a morsel of food with 

 a quick peck. One bird was so tame that within an hour of its capture it 

 came and took grasshoppers and worms quite fearlessly from my fingers, 

 and pecked and nibbled at my hands when the insects were finished. But 

 as a rule they are shier, though they feed well from the first. They drink 

 a great deal and require plenty of water. In drinking they seemed to me to 

 raise the head much less than most birds, drinking steadily for many seconds 

 without lifting the bill at all. The call note of this bird is a curious deep 

 croak, sounding something as if a man were trying to say " kroop ! kroop ! " 

 with his mouth under water ! I have often heard it within twenty or thirty 

 yards of me in tangled thickets of rattan and ixmdanufi, but never have I had 

 a glimpse of the bird, except on the one occasion above mentioned, and once 

 when one fluttered across a path in front of me in the dusk of the evening. 

 The alarm note uttered by a snared bird when approached is a sharp " chick ! 

 chick !" and when caught it sometimes utters a cry rather like that of a 

 wounded rabbit. 



The Eed Rail feeds principally on beetles, grasshoppers, worms, small 

 snails, caterpillars, &c. In the case of large grasshoppers the prey is held 

 in the bill and shaken as a terrier would do a rat, flung down, pounced on, 

 and worried again until nearly dead and then swallowed. This treatment 

 seems specially meted out to grasshoppers ; the bird apparently considering 

 that a lively grasshopper vigorously ' flicking ' its hind legs after being 

 swallowed might not be very comfortable for the swallower ! 



The young bird, which I have not seen described, difl:ers from the adult in 

 having the chesnut parts duller, and the lower parts dark grey with a ches- 

 nvitimg&, narrowly hanried ami siri'alced vi'iih dirty white, instead of black 

 broadly barred with pure white as in the adults. 



Bill dusky olive, legs and feet olive-green, iris reddish-brown or orange- 

 brown. 



The chicks, judging from fragments of nestling down which I noticed all 

 over a very young bird, must be beautiful little things, covered all over with 

 rich chesnut down, slightly greyish under the wings ; iris probably brown ; 

 bill dusky olive. 



In adult birds the bill is bright apple-green, turning to whitish at the tip ; 

 this green colour is so delicate that it gives the bill, which is hard and strong, 

 the appearance of being soft and weak ; the legs are olive-green ; the iris is 

 beautiful clear scarlet, in some just mottled with the smallest specks of gold 

 round the pupil. 



This rail, as far as is known, does not occur in the Nicobars. 

 (2'o be coritinned.) 



