222 LLOYDS NATURAL HISTORY. 



sunning himself or preening his feathers on some projecting 

 rock or bare trunk of a fallen tree, these birds are never to be 

 seen, unless by aid of three or four good dogs, who will 

 speedily rouse them up, or of a trained shikari, who will call 

 them out by cleverly imitating their loud bleating cry. 



" If you ever catch a passing glimpse of them, it is but for a 

 second ; they drop hke stones from their perch and dart away 

 with incredible swiftness, always running, never, so far as I 

 have seen, rising, unless you accidentally almost walk on to 

 them, or have dogs with you. . . . 



"To judge from those I have examined, they feed much on 

 insects, young green shoots of bamboos, and on some onion- 

 like bulbs, but Mr. Hodgson notes that those he examined had 

 fed on wild fruits, rhododendron seeds, and, in some cases, 

 entirely on aromatic leaves, bastard cinnamon, daphne, 

 &c. . . . 



" At the end of April, and very likely earlier, the males are 

 heard continually calling. When one is heard calling in any 

 moderate-sized patch of jungle, you make for the nearest 

 adjoining cover, and work your way sufficiently near to the 

 outside to get a view of the intervening space. Then you 

 squat, and your man begins calling. Very soon he is answered, 

 too often by some wretch of a bird behind you, who persists in 

 ferretting you out, gets scent of you, and goes off with a sudden 

 series of alarm notes that frightens every other bird within a 

 mile, you never having caught the smallest glimpse of it 

 throughout. But if you are in luck, and all goes well, the 

 right bird, and the right bird only, answers, and answers nearer 

 and nearer, till, just as your dusky comrade, forgetting, in his 

 excitement, his wonted respect, pinches your leg, you see a 

 head emerge for a second from the bases of the ringal stems 

 opposite ; again and again the head comes out with more and 

 more of the neck turned rapidly right and left, and then out 

 darts the would-be combatant towards you ; the gun goes off, 

 everything is hid for a moment in the smoke hanging on the 



