SYPHEOTIS AURITA 215 



The Lesser Florican not only suffers from the so-called sportsman 

 who persistently shoots it throughout the breeding season, but it 

 is also much persecuted by native snarers and bird-catchers where- 

 ever and whenever it appears. Colonel Fenton writes to me that he 

 never came across these bird-catchers in Kathiawar, but that in the 

 Deccan " the phansi pardees or professional snarers never gave the 

 birds any rest, and it is not surprising if they have diminished of 

 late years." Mr. James records the same in Hume and Marshall, in 

 which work he is quoted as saying, " Pardis, the professional 

 poachers of the Deccan, snare them along with partridges and quail, 

 simply by setting a rope of snares down the grassy bank of a dry 

 nullah and then beating the bushes." 



The principal food of the Likh consists of grasshoppers, and in 

 catching these and other insects it often hops into the air after 

 them, catching them on the wing. No insect comes amiss to it, and 

 it will feed freely on cantharides, beetles of all kinds, worms, 

 centipedes, and even, when hard pressed, small lizards, frogs, etc. 

 It is also largely a vegetable-feeder, eating both ripe grain and 

 tender shoots of young crops and grasses, as well as many kinds of 

 berries and young herbs. 



Its flesh is generally held to be excellent, though Hume says it 

 is not as good as that of its larger first cousin, the Bengal Florican, 

 and compares its flesh to that of the blue pigeon. The food it eats 

 naturally affects its eating qualities and one sportsman may eat it 

 at one season of the year and find it almost unpalatable, whilst 

 another, a little later, may find it just the reverse. Jerdon thought 

 that, " its flesh is very delicate and of excellent flavour and it is 

 the most esteemed of all the game-birds." Mr. James writes, vide 

 Hume, " It is perfectly true that sometimes the effects caused 

 by eating floricans' flesh after they have been feeding on blister- 

 flies is most painful and disagreeable. I myself have suffered from 

 this cause." 



The two photographic plates of the Florican and the one of the 

 Houbara are from photographs taken by H. H. the Maharas of Cutch, 

 a sportsman with an intimate acquaintance with these birds and their 

 habits and one who has supplied me with many interesting details 

 regarding them. 



