428 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVII, 



" It is a very active bird in amongst the reeds and elephant grass, 

 clambering about them even more quickly and noiselessly than the 

 Purple Coot, and I have several times watched them for some 

 minutes thus clambering about without any apparent object in 

 view before they again droj^ped down below and pursued their 

 way on the ground. Where the water is fairly deep, i.e., over the 

 tarsus, or the mud is too thick they always work to and from their 

 feeding grounds in this manner, but when actually feeding, they 

 seem to keep more or less on the ground itself. In the mornings 

 and evenings they come out into the more oj^en grass along- 

 side their jungles and also haunt the rice fields, especially when 

 the paddy is long and the ears ripening. In Cachar we sometimes 

 caught them out in the freshly-ploughed fields, but they seldom 

 gave a shot, as before we were within distance down went heads 

 and tails and they slunk off at a great pace into cover. I have 

 also shot one or two birds out of mustard fields, and sugarcane 

 patches are a favourite haunt. 



On the wing it is rather a clumsy bird, though it attains quite a 

 good pace once it gets away and fairly started. It rises with con- 

 siderable fluster and whirring of wings, and nearly always with loud 

 chuckles and cacklings such as I have heard no other Frahcolin give 

 vent to. It is very difficult to flush, more perhaps from the nature 

 of the country it frequents than because it is so confirmed a runner. 

 Caught in the open it invariably first runs into cover, unless one is 

 very close indeed to it, but it is so wary a bird that this seldom occurs. 

 On the rare occasions on which I have come across it in grass it did 

 not seem so hard to flush, and as it generally rose within a dozen or 

 twenty yards it was an easy bird to hit. It is easy to kill also, for so 

 big a bird, for its plumage is looser than that of the other Francolins 

 and seems less able to resist shot. 



Probably nowhere is the Swamp Partridge found in sufficient 

 numbers to make a big bag possible, but there are certainly some of 

 its haunts in Sylhet and Maimensingh where one could get anything 

 from 10 to 30 brace with a line of elephants. Again at the height of 

 the rains, about August and September, good bags may be made 

 cither by working the edges of the swamps on foot or by having beats 

 on the numerous small islands left more or less dry in a vast sea of 

 stagnant water. 



One visits the islands in canoes or dug-outs, lands a few men on 

 them to beat them out, and then gets capital snap shots as they 

 dodge round the corner and make for the next islands. An addition 

 to the excitement is the possibility of practically any kind of game 

 turning up from a jungle-fowl to a buffalo or tiger, whilst the beaters 

 have to exercise the greatest care not to get bitten by snakes which 

 swarm on these islands during the floods. 



