NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



its absurd carriage and behaviour during the breeding 

 season. In order to render itself attractive to the hen 

 bird it goes through a most complicated process of 

 plumage manipulation. Quivering its wings and de- 

 pressing the quill feathers, it proceeds to erect its tail 

 and turn it over flat upon its back, thus exposing the 

 white under-feathering in a kind of ruff. Other parts 

 of the plumage are displayed or ruffled out, showing yet 

 more of the white feathering. The head is meanwhile 

 dropped low between the shoulders, the whiskers stand 

 up stiffly, and the throat and forepart of the body are 

 much dilated. Thus disguised — or, as the bird no 

 doubt believes, glorified — the great bustard displays 

 himself solemnly, with occasional jerky leaps, before 

 the hen bird upon which he has set his affections. Much 

 the same kind of process is gone through by the paauw, 

 the gigantic bustard of South Africa, and there is 

 probably little doubt that the early Dutch Boers first 

 bestowed upon that bird its now familiar colonial name 

 — paauw, or peacock — from some fancied resemblance, 

 during this courting period, to the well-known display 

 of the peacock. 



Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, father of the late Dean 

 Stanley, in his History of Birds^ published in the first 

 half of the last century, among other examples of the 

 boldness of birds under certain conditions, gives a 

 curious instance of an attack by a bustard on a human 

 being. "The case of the bustard," he says, "occurred 

 some years ago on Tilshead Downs, in Wiltshire, in 

 the month of June, to a man who was going along the 

 road on horseback, about four o'clock in the morning. 

 His attention was first turned to a large bird flying 

 above his head, which proved to be a bustard, though 

 till then he had scarcely heard of such a bird. He had 

 not proceeded far before it alighted on the ground, 



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