POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS. 1 59 



its soft call-note, and is answered from different 

 directions, and the covey is soon united again. 

 They live habitually in bushes and hedges, but come 

 out into the open to feed early in the morning and 

 again in the evening, moving softly with no visible 

 feet. You may watch them if you keep very still, 

 and it is a pretty sight. Seen at close quarters the 

 Bush Quail is rather a handsome bird, with fat cheeks 

 and a round good-natured face. Though the general 

 colour is rather a dull brown, each feather is prettily 

 freckled with black and buff. The male is much 

 darker above than the female, but his under parts are 

 white, banded with black, and his chin and throat are 

 bright chestnut. Nobody shoots the Bush Quail, 

 which is not worth much for the table; but it is snared 

 by natives, and you will often find them for sale 

 in the Crawford Market. It lays six or seven pale 

 creamy eggs, about the end of the rains, under a bush 

 or tuft of grass. 



There is another group of small game birds known 

 as Bustard Quails, or Button Quails, which has cost 

 the classificators(this word is not in the dictionary, but 

 \ cannot dispense with it) no small perplexity. They 

 mostly want the hind toe (the birds I mean, not the 

 classiricators) and have other peculiarities, on account 

 of which they are given a whole Order to themselves 

 in "The Fauna of British India." Jerdon puts them 

 at the end of the game birds as a Family. They are 

 quiet, shy birds, that live solitary lives in fields and 

 scrub jungle, creeping about among the grass and 

 feeding on seeds and insects. If you chance to tread 

 on one's toes it will start out of the grass and fly 

 swiftly for a few yards and drop again. And this is 



