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GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



of the hen bird. Unless taken absolutely unawares by the searcher 

 she never rises direct from her nesting-place when disturbed, but 

 creeps through the grass until she has got a considerable distance 

 from it, after which she rises and flies straight away. Thus, one can 

 never hope to find the eggs within fifty yards of where she is flushed, 

 and often they may be 200 yards from this spot. She exhibits the 

 same care in approaching her eggs, alighting a hundred yards away 

 and walking through the jungle up to them. Fortunately, the bird 

 when disturbed generally makes off in a bee-line from the object 

 disturbing her, so that the egg-collector, marking the spot whence 

 she rises, generally finds the eggs by working back in a straight line 

 towards the direction whence he has come. 



An Indian friend who was so kind as to look after my collectors 

 for me and to collate notes on the birds' breeding habits, wrote to me 

 as follows about this bustard : — 



" A Florican lays only two eggs a year in the breeding-season 

 (April and May). Dense forests infested with ferocious animals, 

 scarcely trodden by men, are the places where eggs are laid on the 

 ground. The bird takes great precautions to conceal her eggs, and 

 you can hardly find any eggs within a quarter of a mile from the 

 place where a Florican is seen. She creeps through the forest 

 unobserved to a great distance to lay her eggs. A very careful and 

 extensive search is required to discover them." 



Nest there is none, and the eggs are merely laid in some natural 

 depression under shelter of a tussock of grass. Where there is no 

 such convenient hollow the bird scratches one in the soil or lays 

 them on the ground without taking even this much trouble. 



The number laid is almost invariably two, though sometimes a 

 single egg may be incubated. It is practically certain that neither 

 three nor four eggs are ever laid by one bird, and the frequent stories 

 recorded to this effect are groundless. It is very noticeable that 

 of the two eggs laid incubation is generally far more advanced in one 

 than the other, and they would appear to be laid at an interval of 

 several days. My own collectors told me that when they found a 

 single egg laid they often waited three to five days before the second 

 was deposited. 



Incubation would seem to take about twenty-five to twenty-seven 

 days, though this is only guess-work. A pair found on the 5th May, 



