RED-BREASTED HILL-PARTRIDGE 247 



such cases it is suspected that often a covey may be really present, 

 but refusing to rise simply because one of their number has been 

 disturbed, for sometimes parties of half a dozen may be seen. 

 Their call, according to Cripps, is "a voWiugwhiatle, whew, wheir, 

 repeated many times, and winding up with a sharper and more 

 quickly uttered wheio. As is usually the case with these part- 

 ridges, the call can be easily imitated, and by such imitation they 

 are most readily shot ; in the ordinary way, as with the common 

 hill-partridge of the west, they afford only chance-shots, and are 

 only worth picking up casually when such opportunities occur. 

 They rise with a loud whirr and whistled alarm-call, and fly well 

 and fast ; but will not fly at all if they can help it. The eggs are 

 white, and have been found at the foot of trees on shaded teelahs, 

 of about two hundred feet high ; the nest was a scrape lined with 

 leaves and twigs, and four seems to be the full set, as they have 

 been found incubated. 



Red-breasted Hill-Partridge. 



Arhoricola mandellii. 



This is the rarest and at the same time the most striking 

 of our hill-partridges, so that it is curious that only very few 

 specimens have been obtained so far, and these in Bhutan and 

 Sikkim, always at low elevations. It is of the usual olive-brown 

 seen in these partridges above, spotted distinctly with black ; 

 below it is dull grey for the most part, with the chestnut markings 

 on the flanks not very distinct, and the white spots small. But 

 the throat and breast are very distinctly and handsomely coloured, 

 the former being bright chestnut or rusty, speckled with black at 

 the sides, while the latter is of a much deeper shade, verging on 

 maroon ; between the two shades there is a well-marked double 

 collar on the front of the neck, white above and black below. 

 The hen is perhaps rather duller than the cock, but there is 

 no certainty about this, nor about the colour of the legs, so that 

 even the appearance of this bird is not fully known. As far as 

 size goes, however, this species is markedly smaller than the rest 

 of the typical hill-partridges. 



It seems to frequent heavy jungle on damp ground. 



