The Game-birds and Rails 



403 



Pliol 



[Regent's Park. 



\do, F.Z.S.] 

 HIMALAYAN MONAL. 



In some parts of India this bird has been exterminated, owing to the 

 demands of the plume-market. 



The COMMON PARTRIDGE is the more 

 abundant of the two species. Though more 

 sober in coloration, it is still a beautiful 

 bird. The " horse-shoe " mark, borne on the 

 breast, so characteristic of this bird, is not 

 confined to the males, as is generally believed. 

 " Yielding," says Professor Newton, " perhaps 

 in economic importance to the red grouse, 

 what may be called the social influence of 

 the partridge is greater than that excited by 

 any other wild bird." 



This bird displays great courage and 

 affection in defence of its eggs or young. 

 A story illustrating this is told of a gentle- 

 man near Spilsby, in Lincolnshire, who, 

 " whilst superintending his ploughmen, saw a 

 partridge glide off her nest, so near the foot 

 of one of his plough-horses that he thought 

 the eggs must be crushed ; this, however, 

 was not the case. ... He saw the old bird 

 return to her nest the instant he left the 

 spot. It was evident that the next round 

 of the plough must bury the eggs and nest 

 in the furrow. His surprise was great when, 

 returning with the plough, he came to the 



spot and saw the nest indeed, but the eggs and bird were gone. An idea struck him that 



she had removed her eggs ; and he found her, before 



he left the field, sitting under the hedge upon 



twenty-one eggs. . . . The .round of ploughing had 



occupied about twenty minutes, in which time she. 



probably aided by the cock bird, had removed the 



twenty-one eggs to a distance of about forty yards." 

 The RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGES, their allies the 



FRANCOLINS, and the GREY PARTRIDGES are all ground- 

 birds ; the TREE-PARTRIDGES, as the name implies, are 



not, or at least less completely so hence their 



mention here. They are natives of the Indo-Chinese 



countries, and the islands of Java, Borneo, and Formosa. 

 The QUAIL is a little-known British bird, very like 



a small partridge in appearance. Enormous numbers, 



Professor Newton tells us, " are netted on the Continent, 



especially in the spring migration. The captives are 



exposed in the poulterers' shops, confined in long, 



cloth-covered cages, with a feeding-trough in front." 



The bulk "of these are males, which are the first to 



arrive, and advantage is taken of this circumstance by 



the bird-catchers, who decoy hundreds into their nets 



by imitating the call-note of the female. It has been 



stated that in the small island of Capri, in the Bay 



of Naples, 160,000 have been netted in a single photoby w. P. Dando, F.Z.H.] [Regent's 



season, and even larger numbers are on record." An HIMALAYAN MONAL. 



idea of the Vast numbers which travel together in The female of the monal is quite soberly cJad. 



