16- JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVIl 



" chicks lie concealed, and invariably on the cry of a chick 



" wounded or captured, the parent birds daringly return to the 



" rescue, often to within a dozen yards or so of the sportsman. 



" The chicks are very soon able to fly as well and as fast as 



" the old birds, and it is then not easy to get very near 



"them." 



General Habits. — This Spur -Fowl is not so restricted to dense 



forest or bamboo cover as the last species, and appears rather to 



haunt broken ground with numerous boulders and rocks amongst 



the vegetation, and this love of rocks and rocky ground seems to 



be the principal cause in restricting its haunts, for in wide stretches 



where these are absent, no birds will be found, though in suitable 



areas on either side it may be common. Neither does it ascend the 



hills to the same height as does the Red Spur-Fowl, and probably 



few birds live at altitudes over 3,000 feet, though the evidence on 



this point is very scanty. 



Major 0. R. S. Pitman says that he found them extraordinarily 

 common in the Central Provinces on rocky hills of Granitoid Gneiss 

 covered with forest, bamboo and thorn jungle, with thin scrub and 

 grass on the tops. Here they seemed to prefer the crests of the 

 hills where the cover consisted of this scrub and grass rather than 

 those parts lower down with tree forest, and the more open this 

 cover, the greater the certainty of finding several pairs of Painted 

 Spur-Fowl. 



In a letter to me Major Pitman writes : — 



" It much prefers running to flying, and is fond of scuttling 

 " about amongst rocks or standing on the highest one of some 

 " group of rocks and thence surveying the country all round it. 

 " During three weeks I saw many every day, and, though 

 " when hard-pressed they are not difii cult to flush, flying rather 

 " like a partridge, I never saw one fly up-hill unless occasion- 

 " ally when birds flew down from one hill across a col to the 

 " next one. Then if flushed again, they would sometimes fly 

 ' ' back to their original crest. Down-hill they fly readily enough 

 " however steep and seem to get along equally well whether 

 " hurling themselves down obliquely or at the steepest angles. 

 " I have often noticed both sexes perch in trees when fright- 

 " ened whether by dog or man, possibly to see better what 

 " was worrying them ; even then though they had to fly up it 

 " was either a sort of scramble from directly below or a point 

 " used as a rest as they flew down-hill. 



" When frightened on the slopes at the bottom of a hill, 

 " they invariably make for the top running, all with a view of 

 " eventually being able to look back from some high vantage 

 •' point. Thus I found an excellent way of shooting them was 

 " to walk along the hill crests with a beater on either side 



