402 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIII. 



The females are very pugnacious at all times, though more 

 especially so when breeding, and their pugnacity is taken advantage 

 of by natives of many parts of the country to entrap them. Jerdon 

 thus describes how the first cousin of this bird, taijoor, is caught in 

 "the South of India : 



" For the purpose a small cage with a decoy bird is used, 

 having a concealed spring compartment, made to fall by the 

 snapping of a thread placed between the bars of the cage ; 

 it is set on the ground in some thick cover, carefully pro- 

 tected. The decoy bird begins her loud purring call, which 

 can be heard a long way off, and any females within earshot 

 run rapidly to the spot and commence fighting with the caged 

 bird, striking at the bars. This soon breaks the thread, the 

 spring cover falls, ringing a small bell at the same time, by 

 which the owner, who remains concealed near at hand, is 

 warned of a capture, and he runs up and secures his prey 

 and sets the cage in another locality. In this way I have 

 known 12 to 20 birds occasionally captured in one day, in a 

 patch of thick, bushy jungle in the Carnatic, where alone I 

 have known this practice carried on. The birds that are 

 caught in this way are all females, and in most cases are 

 birds laying eggs at the same time, for I have frequently 

 known instances of some eight or ten of these captures, so far 

 advanced in the process as to lay eggs in the bag in which they 

 were carried, before the bird catcher had reached his house." 

 In North Cachar the Nagas had a somewhat similar way of 

 catching them. A hen bird was pegged down by one leg to the 

 ground by a piece of string about a couple of feet long, and all 

 round her, at a distance of five feet or so, where the ground had 

 been partially cleared, were placed innumerable nooses of goat's, 

 ■or mithun hair tied to inconspicuous creepers. 



As soon as the decoy bird settled down, the Naga would get 

 behind a bush, whilst 1, when I looked on, would select a tree where 

 from a few feet above the ground one could see all that took 

 place. After being left alone for a few minutes, the hen would 

 preen and clean herself, and presently start booming, at first sitting 

 up in a semi-erect position, but gradually lowering her breast to the 

 ground, with out-stretched wings, and blowing herself out with each 

 boom until she looked like a little feather balloon. As a rule we 

 had not long to wait before there was an answering boom, and 

 almost immediately a Bustard Quail would slink up and, if not 

 •caught in one of the outer nooses, would also squat a second or two 

 and then boom back at her opponent once or twice, after which she 

 would rush headlong to the fight. As a rule she was caught at once 

 in the nooses, but sometimes she would escape these and, seizing on 

 the tethered female, engage in a mortal combat. In such cases the 



