62 Monograph of the Cranes. 



in the Dukhun in parties of six or eight to twenty. These are probably stragglers from 

 the main army. It keeps entirely to open, dry country, in the vicinity of the Ganges 

 and other large rivers which have extensive sand flats bordering their streams. 

 During the day they are generally observed high in air, seldom coming to the ground 

 unless in the most solitary places, when they rest on isolated sand islets in the river, 

 or on the highest parts of wide barren tracts, clear of any covert which might conceal 

 the approach of an invader; and at all times they are most wary and difficult of 

 approach. 



In serene weather in the cold season, when, though the skies are cloudless blue, the 

 mild atmosphere enables the sportsman to roam all daylong over miles of far- stretching 

 plains, the sonorous trumpet call of the crane is one of the most familiar sounds that 

 meet the ear. The cry resembles the syllable " kurrk," a single loud brassy note, 

 harsh and metallic, but mellowed by the vast distance at which it is generally heard. 

 At such times the birds may be seen high in the air, advancing in an angle or in a 

 single diagonal line, winnowing their way across the pathless vault to distant regions, 

 or soaring round and round in irregulur swarms, and independently, as if reconnoitring 

 the country below to select a fit place for their nocturnal meal. When thus employed 

 sometimes two or more parties meet, and the clamour amongst them then becomes 

 extreme, like the mutual clacking and cackling of assembled geese. Should the 

 country, as before said, be quite open, and no human being be observed moving on the 

 plain, they will sometimes descend to the ground in the daytime, and on such occasions 

 the downward sweep, from a height of perhaps a mile in the air to the face of the earth, 

 of two or three hundreds of these large birds, is a majestic spectacle, though of 

 necessity only to be seen from afar. 



I once, indeed, met with a striking exception to this wary habit of the crane in 

 keeping, during the day, out of gunshot in the air. In January, 1845, as I was one 

 day riding along the Trunk-road (as the old Government road from Calcutta to Delhi is 

 called), in the district of Manbhoom, near the village or chowkee of Niamutpoor, I came 

 in sight and within point-blank ball shot of a host of these birds collected in a rice 

 stubble field. There was a prodigious concourse of them, amounting probably to a 

 thousand. They were making a deafening clamour, and seemed in great agitation, 

 while every now and then a party of them would take wing and fly ofl", generally to the 

 eastward, towards the Damoodur river, but many went in other directions. The 

 country in the vicinity was open and wild, with bushes scattered about, and here and 

 there a cultivated patch ; the hour early in the morning. By sunrise they had all 

 disappeared. I was told by the villagers that as night fell the birds would return and 

 reassemble in the same spot, and that they had been in the habit of doing so for many 

 years. I confess I was never more astonished at anything within the circle of ornithology 

 than at this instance of exception to the wild and wary habits of the crane. They could 

 not have assembled in the field (which was not a large one) to feed, as the grain in the 

 stubble would not have afforded a night's meal to a tenth part of the flock. The most 

 probable conjecture is that they fed elsewhere during the night, as is the wont of the 

 bird, and repaired to that particular spot to rest till dawn, congregating in separate 

 and independent parties. But why they should have collected night after night in a 

 spot so near a village, and so liable to approach, is inconceivable. The people of the 

 vicinity are, it must be noted, no shikaries, and the report of a gun was probably 

 a sound almost unknown in that part of the district. The crane, like most water fowl, 

 feeds at night, more as a matter of precaution than by choice. No such nocturnal 

 habits are perceived in tame individuals, nor, ii; is probable, in the wild steppes of Tibet 

 or Siberia, where these birds breed unmolested, and roam about free from the sight 

 even of a human being. 



In India, after filling their crops with the gleanings from the rice and vetch stubbles, 

 the cranes retire at or soon after sunrise to sand flats or islets in large rivers, or to 



