94 On Birds found in Eastern Bengal. 



In the "warmer season, just before the earliest rains set in, 

 Sypheotides bengalensis (the Bengal Florikin) is always to be 

 found here ; possibly it breeds here ; at any rate, from about 

 this neighbourhood northwards towards Rungpore and Assam 

 the bird becomes eommon, and from this plaee southwards it 

 seems to be hardly known. 



The Partridge tribe are feebly represented at this j heel: an 

 occasional Francolin or Black Partridge strays from the bush 

 jungles on the left bank of the Bunser ; and the Kyat Partridge 

 {Oriygornis gidaris) was once seen by me here. These birds 

 are common a little higher up the Bunser, in the Mymensing 

 district, and are exceedingly numerous in the rose-bush jun- 

 gles at the foot of the Mymensing and Sylliet hills, in the 

 rains. The pretty little Excalfactoria chinensis (the Blue- 

 breasted Quail) was common in the indigo-fields. The Com- 

 mon Quail appears only in what are known as Quail-years. 



Rallidse of numerous species abound in this jheel; and, 

 indeed, so they do in every jheel in Eastern Bengal, more 

 especially in Tippera, where Porphyrio poliocephalus, called 

 by Jerdon the Purple Coot, is so common and destructive 

 that in places the rate of rent of rice-lands at the foot of the 

 hills has at times to be lessened on account of their ravages. 

 In Tippera, in the height of the rains, I have, in company 

 with one other man, out of canoes pushed among the rice 

 crops by men with poles, shot fifty couple of these birds in 

 two hours. The sport was varied by the slaughter of Galli- 

 crex cristatus (the Khora of Eastern Bengal) and several 

 pairs of the beautiful Pheasant-tailed Jacana {Eydrophasianus 

 chirurgus) and of Nettapus : both these birds, being at that 

 time in lovely plumage, were shot in the same fields. 



The Khora is much valued in Eastern Bengal ; it is kept 

 in cages, is very tame, and used for catching wild Khoras, 

 which it entices by its notes and then fights. I once knew a 

 small elephant exchanged for a famous Khora. In parts of 

 Tippera the natives plaee the eggs of this bird in half a cocoa- 

 nut shell filled with soft cotton ; the half shell is then bound 

 over a man's navel; and in this manner the eggs are hatched. 



The common Bald Coot is to be found in the jheels be- 

 tween Jessore and Backergunge. 



