160 INDIAN SPOETING BIRDS 



cover, and cultivation to suit it, and so it is local. It is, however, 

 often found in places which do not seem by any means ideal, 

 such as the sandy semi-desert parts of the North-west. Here it 

 is protected by its sanctity in Hindu eyes, and indeed everywhere 

 where Hinduism is dominant ; in native states no one may shoot 

 it, and in any case it is always well to ascertain the state of local 

 religious feeling before firing at peafowl, or the consequences may 

 easily be serious. 



No doubt in many out-of-the-way and naturally unsuitable 

 places these birds have been artificially introduced, and where 

 rigidly protected they are half tame ; but where they have to 

 lake their chance few birds are wilder and more wary, and they 

 are most untiring runners, only taking to wing as a last resort. 

 The flight is quite different from that of a pheasant, the wings 

 moving with comparatively leisurely flaps and no sailing inter- 

 vals ; however, it is much faster than it looks, and the birds, if 

 positively forced, can rocket like any pheasant; but the old cocks, 

 whose long trains are so much dead weight, cannot fly very far 

 at a time, and have been even run down by persistent chasing 

 during the hot weather. It is probable that any shifting of 

 ground that the peafowl have to make is done mostly on foot, 

 as used to be the case with wild turkeys in America in the days 

 of their abundance ; these birds, by the way, having also limited 

 powers of flight, often fell into rivers and had to swim ashore, 

 and I have seen in England a young peacock reduced to the 

 same extremity by having tried to fly across a stream with 

 clipped wings, save himself similarly, swimming as readily as 

 a moorhen. 



The scream of the peacock is very well known, but the 

 ordinary call-note is less familiar ; it sounds like anyone trying 

 to pronounce the bird's Latin name Pavo through a trumpet, and 

 is often used as an alarm-call. Being essentially birds of tree- 

 jungle, pea-fowl naturally roost on trees, and high trees at that ; 

 but they do not mount to the top, but settle down on the lower 

 boughs. They are late in roosting in the wild state, and some- 

 times in domestication, though I have commonly observed them 

 going to bed quite early. Yet they are wary at night — at any 

 rate an escaped hen in Covent Garden defied nocturnal surprises 



