734 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXL 



diminished of late years." Mr. James records the same in Hume' 

 and Marshall in which work he is quoted as saying " Pardis, the- 

 professional poachers of the Deccan, snare them along with 

 Partridges and Quail, simply by setting a rope of snares down the' 

 grassy bank of a dry nullah and then beating the bushes." 



The principal food of the Likh consists of grasshoppers and in 

 catching these, and other insects, it often hops into the air after' 

 them, catching them on the wing. No insect comes amiss to it 

 and it will feed freely on Cantharides, beetles of all kinds, worms,, 

 centipedes and even, when hard pressed, small lizards, frogs, etc. 

 It is also largely a vegetable feeder, eating both ripe grain and 

 tender shoots of young crops and grasses as well as many kinds of 

 berries and young herbs. 



Its flesh is generally held to be excellent, though Hume says it 

 is not as good as that of its larger first cousin, the Bengal 

 Florican, and compares its flesh to that of the Blue Pigeon. The- 

 food it eats naturally aflects its eating qualities and one sportsman; 

 may eat it at one season of the year and find it almost unpalatable,, 

 whilst another, a little later, may find it just the reverse. Jerdon> 

 thought that " its flesh is very delicate and of excellent flavour and 

 it is the most esteemed of all the G-ame Birds." Mr. James writes, 

 vide Hiime, '•' It is perfectly true that sometimes the eflects caused 

 b}^ eating Floricans' flesh after the}^ have been feeding on blister- 

 flies is most painful and disagreeable. I myself have sufferedi 

 from this cause. " 



The breeding season of the Lesser Florican varies much im 

 diffei'ent localities. Jerdon says that some birds breed in Southern 

 India from July to November and that he has put the hen bird off 

 her nest in August in the Deccan and in October near Trichi- 

 nopoly, and he also says that he has heard of hens being found 

 sitting as late as January. Hume says that the majorit}^ breed in. 

 September and October and this agrees with the observations of 

 most other observers in the more northern of their breeding- 

 haunts. As regards- Kathiawar, however, it would seem that they 

 commence rather earlier. Colonel L. L. Fenton writes me : " Only 

 an occasional bird is to be seen at any other season of the year, but 

 about the end of June they arrive in great numbers in the Kathiawar- 



