224 INDIAN SPORTING BIRDS 



often positively nasty, no doubt on account of some herbs or 

 roots they eat. All birds with this attribute of occasional 

 unpleasantness, by the way, ought to be drawn as soon as killed, 

 as this often prevents the tainting of the flesh by the food which 

 may have been eaten ; and in any case some natives will eat 

 them, so that shooting them is not by any means wanton 

 destruction. 



Their chief enemy appears to be the golden eagle, but as he 

 prefers, according to Wilson's excellent account of this species, 

 to take his game sitting, and the snow-cock naturally does not 

 wait for this, but flies off before his tyrant stoops, he does not 

 often get one. But this may only apply to the young eagle, the 

 ring-tail as Wilson calls it, from the banded appearance of the 

 tail, which has a white base in the young ; no doubt the older 

 birds learn by practice to catch their prey flying, and in fact 

 I have read somewhere a description of such a chase in which 

 the eagle used his advantage of height to drop on the flying 

 snow-cock before the victim had got up full speed. 



The comparatively few birds which breed on the Indian 

 side of the Himalayas nest from 12,000 feet upwards to the 

 snows, making a " scrape " in some spot well sheltered from 

 rain. The eggs are not unlike turkeys' eggs, but darker and 

 greener in the ground-colour, an olive or brownish stone- 

 colour in fact, with fine brown spots. Five is the usual clutch, 

 and when more are seen it is to be suspected that two pairs have 

 " pooled " their broods, though many pairs separate and bring 

 up their young by themselves in the usual manner of partridges. 

 The eggs are generally laid by the end of May, but sometimes 

 not till early in July. This conspicuous bird naturally has many 

 names : Huimval in Kumaun, Kubiik or Gourkagu in Kashmir, 

 Leep in Kulu, and Kullu, Lupu, or Baera in Western Nepal, 

 though the bird is not actually found in Nepal itself; the 

 Mussoori hillmen's name, Jei'-moonal, implies a recognition of 

 the relationship of this great partridge to the short-tailed so- 

 called pheasants of the tragopan and the monaul groups. 



