178 INDIAN SPORTING BIRDS 



hen and brood often associate, and flocks of these jungle-fowl 

 may sometimes be seen feeding on cultivated land, but on the 

 whole the species, like the grey jungle-fowl, seems to be more 

 shy and unsociable than the red bird of the north. It also 

 resembles the grey jungle-cock in taking a good deal to trees 

 in wet weather, and in its fondness for Strobilanthes seed, the 

 " nilloo " of Ceylon, on which the bird feeds so greedily that 

 it seems to become stupefied, being a plant of this genus. 



There is a point of affinity with the red jungle-fowl, however, 

 not only in the colour of the male of this bird, but in his habit of 

 flapping his wings before he crows ; this, as far as I have seen, 

 the grey bird does not do, but in this species, as in the red 

 jungle-cock and his tame descendants, the habit must be very 

 pronounced, for shooters can and do decoy the cocks within shot 

 by imitating this sound, the native doing it by striking the thigh 

 with the slightly-curved open hand. Any other noise will cause 

 the wary bird to run off at once. 



The food of this bird consists chiefly of wild seeds, but also of 

 insects, especially of white ants. In one part of Ceylon or the 

 other it may be found breeding at any time of the year, depending 

 apparently on the incidence of the north-east monsoon ; it is 

 even thought that the birds may be double-brooded, and they 

 seem to pair. The young, even the full grown, have been seen 

 to show great reluctance to leave their dead mother when she 

 had been shot. 



The small clutch of two to four eggs is laid on the ground 

 in a scanty nest in some thicket or at times on a decayed log, are 

 much pale buff, and speckled finely and spotted with rusty red, 

 like many eggs of the grey jungle-fowl, to which this species, in 

 spite of its red colour, is probably quite as nearly related as it 

 is to the red bird, unless it represents the ancestor of both, as 

 seems possible from the hybrid grey and domestic specimen 

 before-mentioned, having come out reddish below as well as 

 above. Moreover, this hybrid, like the grey jungle-fowl, had a 

 purple, not green, tail, and this is also the case with the Ceylon 

 jungle-fowl. 



The legs of this species are also said to be j^ellow, but, 

 Lewis Wright, in Cassell's " Book of Poultry," says, pink in the 



