GKEY PAKTEIDGE 227 



All these points are easily to be studied by any newcomer to 

 India before he goes out to shoot, for this partridge, being 

 the favourite fighting bird among sporting natives, is con- 

 stantly to be seen in cages everywhere, and its characteristic call, 

 kd, kit, kateetur, kateetur, as it is well rendered by Hume, is the 

 first game-bird's note one is likely to hear other than the 

 degenerate utterances of the domesticated descendants of the 

 mallard and jungle-fowl and the cooing of the blue pigeons. 



Almost wherever one goes in India one is Hkely to find this 

 bird, and it is also found m the north of Ceylon, where it is 

 called Oussa-ivatmva, but is not an inhabitant of Burma, though 

 in the opposite direction it is found outside our limits to the Gulf. 

 It is absent in swampy districts and heavy jungle, and does not 

 occur south of Bombay on the Malabar coast-line, nor is it found 

 in Lower Bengal, being a bird of dry, warm soils, low cover and 

 cultivation. But, although it is to some extent a percher, taking 

 readily to trees when alarmed, and often roosting in them, it can 

 do without such cover as well as without cultivation, and exist, 

 if the ground be broken, in practically desert localities, as in the 

 Sind hills. It does not go high in the hills anywhere, a couple 

 of thousand feet being its limit. 



It is a bold bird, not only feeding on ploughed and stubble 

 fields, but on roads, and visiting threshing-floors in the early 

 mornings ; in fact, it hangs about villages so much that it shares 

 the unsavoury reputation of the hare and the village fowl. Grain 

 of all sorts it gladly eats, and also takes grass and seeds, young 

 leaves and insects, especially white ants, breaking up a nest 

 of these being an excellent way to attract partridges. Even 

 when it has been living on irreproachable diet, however, this 

 partridge is poor and dry compared with his savoury relative 

 in Britain, and although he flies more smartly and strongly, 

 has a great objection to doing so, and will run so persistently that 

 to follow him is only missing chances at quail and hares, which 

 are more certain shots ; tlfongh in some places, as in heavy grain 

 crops on cloddy soil, the little skulkers can be made to rise willy- 

 nilly, and then furnish good enough sport. They can also be 

 treed by any dog which will hunt, and shot in this way, but 

 in the ordinary way are only subjects for chance shots and not 

 a regular object of pursuit. 



