CHLAMYDOTIS UNDtJLATA MACQUBENII 197 



Sometimes the hawk falls like a stone when thus squirted, and he has 

 to be washed with warm water before he can fly again." 



This habit seems to be common to the members of this family, 

 most of which pass this offensive fluid when attacked or wounded. 



Hume says that sometimes very large bags of Houbara are made, 

 and that in the Pairi district in favourable years " any man could 

 shoot twenty in a day, and General Marsten, while Superintendent 

 of Police in the Kurrachee district, shot, I believe, forty-eight (and 

 some people say fifty-eight) on one occasion." 



As regards the food of the Bustard there is little to add to what 

 Hume has recorded. They are more or less omnivorous, as are the 

 other birds of this family, but they are far more vegetarian in their 

 diet and are not nearly as gross feeders as the larger species. They 

 will, when driven to it by stress of hunger, sometimes eat small 

 reptiles, &c., but they do not eat these in preference to green food, 

 and they are very partial to young wheat and similar crops, and are 

 said sometimes to cause considerable injury to such crops in the 

 Punjab. 



Their flight is more like that of Otis tarda and Eupodotis 

 edioardsl than like that of Otis tetrax or the floricans. They progress 

 by slow steady beats of the wing and cover the ground at a very good 

 pace, and when being hawked turn, twist or drop to the ground with 

 wonderful rapidity. As a rule they run before taking to wing, but can 

 take to flight quite easily without any preliminary walk, and when 

 flushed in thick crops rise like pheasants and are then easily shot. 



Our coloured plate of this bird is both beautiful and correct. The 

 attitude shown thereon is a semi-courting one ; when the bird 

 reaches the full frenzy of his passion the tail is thrown back well 

 over the back and the wings are trailed until they touch the ground, 

 and in some cases the ends of the feathers are elevated and the 

 shoulders are depressed, whilst the wings are forced outwards so as to 

 form a sort of screen extending on either side of the breast. 



The collar on the breast of the bird in the picture is almost absent, 

 and generally shows a good deal more than this. 



