TRE GAME BIRDS 01 INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 835 



like a Heron under similar circumstances. If he can get immedi- 

 ately over the pursuing hawk he squirts him with a stinking 

 gummy (anal) liquid which sticks the hawks feathers together 

 so that he cannot fl}'. Sometimes the hawk falls like a stone 

 when thus squirted and he has to be crashed with warm water 

 before he can fly again/' 



This habit seems to be common to the members of this family 

 most of which pass this offensive fluid when attacked or wounded. 



Hume says that sometimes very large bags of Houbara are made, 

 and that in Pairi District in favourable years " any man could 

 shoot twenty in a daj^/' and General Marsten, while Superintendent 

 of Police in the Kurrachee District, shot, I believe, forty-eight 

 (and some people say fifty-eight) on one occasion." 



As regards the food of the Bustard there is little to add to what 

 Hume has recorded. They are more or less omnivorous, as are the 

 other birds of this famil}', but they are far more vegetarian in their 

 diet and are not nearly as gross feeders as the larger species. They 

 will, when driven to it by stress of hunger, sometimes eat small 

 reptiles, etc., but they do not eat these in jrreference to green food, 

 and they are very partial to 3'oung wheat and similar crops and are 

 said sometim.es to cause considerable injury to such crops in the 

 Punjab. 



Their flight is more like Otis tarda and Uajjodotis edivardsi than 

 like Otis tetrax or the Ploricans. They progress by slow steady 

 beats of the wing and cover the ground at a xqyj good pace, and 

 when being hawked turn, twist, or drop to the ground with 

 wonderful rapidity. As a rule they run before taking to wing but 

 can take to flight quite easily without any preliminar}^ walk, and 

 when flushed in thick crops rise like pheasants and are then easily 

 shot. 



The Houbara breeds in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Persia and 

 the Persian Gulf. It has never jet been found breeding actually 

 within Indian limits, but it is quite possible it may yet be found 

 to breed occasionally in Sind. H. E. Barnes records : "I feel siire 

 that a few at least remain to breed, both in Sind and Cutch; 

 a friend of mine avers that he has seen eggs in the latter place, but 

 as he did not preserve them, he may have made a mistake, but he is 



