32 Mr. A. Hume on Indian Ornithology. 



them ; but it does not at all follow that they do not lay more 

 than one egg. Our commonest Indian Crane, which usually 

 lays two, and sometimes, though rarely, three eggs, and which 

 has no long or arduous journey to perform, seldom succeeds in 

 rearing more than one young one. 



Judging from those of its congeners whose breeding-habits 

 are best known to me — G. antigone and G. australasianus — as 

 also from what is recorded of the Common* and Demoiselle 

 Cranes (whose nests I have never myself taken), I should 

 suppose that they lay two eggs ; but, if this be the case, I can 

 only say that out of more than a hundred pairs that I have seen, 

 from first to last, I never yet saw any with more than one 

 young one. 



The watchful care and tender solicitude evinced by the old 

 birds for their only child is most noticeable. They never suffer 

 the young one to stray from their side, and, while they them- 

 selves are rarely more than thirty yards apart, and generally 

 much closer, the young, I think, is invariably somewhere 

 between them. If either bird find a particularly promising 

 rush-tuft, it will call the little one to its side, by a faint 

 creaking cry, and watch it eating, every now and then aff'ection- 

 ately running its long bill through the young one^s feathers. 

 If, as sometimes happens, the young only be shot, the old birds, 

 though rising in the air with many cries, will not leave the 

 place, but for hours after keep circling round and round high 

 out of gun- or even rifle-shot, and for many days afterwards 

 will return apparently disconsolately seeking their lost treasure. 



Like the Sarus, these birds pair, I think, for life; at any 

 rate, a pair whose young one was shot last year, and both of 

 whom were subsequently wounded about the legs, so as to make 

 them very recognizable, appeared again this year, accompanied 

 by a young one, and were at once noticed as being our wary 

 friends of the past year by both the native fowlers and myself. 

 I was glad to see they were none the worse for their swollen, 

 crooked, bandy legs ; and this year at least they have got safe 

 home, I hope, with their precious charge. 



The worst of ornithology is having to kill birds like these. 

 • [See ' Ibis,' 1859, pp. 191-198.— Ed.] 



