226 cassell's book of birds. 



capture a work of some difficulty, except during the breeding season. At that time both sexes lay 

 aside their usual shy, quist deportment, and exhibit the most fierce pugnacity towards all their 

 companions. The strangest part of these encounters is that they are not confined to the males, as 

 is usually the case, the females being fully as jealous and as violent as their mates, and, like them, 

 constantly engage in such furious encounters as nearly to cost them their lives. Owing to this 

 peculiar temperament these birds are trained by the Asiatics as fighting-cocks are in Europe. The 

 nest is composed of grasses, and is placed in a hollow on the surface of the ground, under the shelter 

 of a tussock of grass. The female usually lays four pear-shaped eggs. 



THE BLACK-BREASTED BUSTARD QUAIL. 



The Black-breasted Bu.stard Quail (Tuniix pugnax), a well-known species of the above 

 group, has the foot furnished with only three toes. The feathers on the mantle are of a dark brown 

 tipped with crescent-shaped black and rust-red spots ; the region of the eye, bridles, and cheeks are 

 white, spotted with black ; the wings are greyish brown, spotted with black and white ; the quills are 

 edged with white on the outer web ; the throat is deep black, and the lower breast and belly bright 

 rust-red ; the rest of the plumage resembles that of the male. The eye is white, the beak light grey, 

 and the foot dark yellow. This species is six inches long ; the wing measures three inches, and the 

 tail one inch. The female is considerably larger than her mate. 



This interesting bird, which has long been a domestic favourite with the Hindoos and Malays, is 

 very common in Java, where, as everywhere else, it frequents grassy patches in the forests and 

 jungles, low bushy jungle, or fields of dhal and other thick crops near patches of brushwood; but it 

 is rarely found in barren country, or in cultivated ground where there is no shelter. It feeds on 

 various kinds of grain, sniall insects, and grasshoppers. The call of the female is a peculiar, loud, 

 purring sound. 



"The hen birds," says Jerdon, "are most pugnacious, especially about the breeding season; and 

 this propensity is made use of in the south of India to effect their capture. To this end 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. This is set on the ground in some thick cover, carefully 

 protected. The decoy-bird begins her loud purring call, which can be heard a long way off, and any 

 females within earshot rapidly run to the spot and commence fighting with the caged bird, striking at 

 the bars. This soon breaks the thread, the spring-cover falls, at the same time ringing a small bell, 

 by which the owner, who remains concealed near at hand, is warned of a capture, and at once nms 

 up, secures his prey, and sets his cage again in another locality. In this way I have known twelve to 

 twenty birds captured in one day in a patch of jungle in the Carnatic, where only I have seen 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 time, for I haye frequently known instances of some eight or ten of those captured 

 so far advanced in egg-bearing as to lay their eggs in the bag in which they were carried before the 

 bird-catcher had reached my house." 



The eggs, which are usually laid in a hollow in the ground, behind a bush, or sheltered by a stone, 

 are from five to eight in number, of a dull stone-grey or green tint, thickly spotted and freckled with 

 dusky yellowish broi^Ti ; they are blunt in shape and very large in proportion to the bird. The 

 affection of the male of thi'; species for its offspring would appear to be by no means inferior to that of 

 the mother ; for we learn from Swinhoe that upon one occasion, having succeeded in capturing two 

 young Bustard Quails that were almost fully fledged and placed them in a cage, he observed the 

 female parent, as he supposed, clucking like a hfn, as it ran and crept about the prisoners in a vain 

 endeavour to lure them out of their strange abode In order to secure a specimen the bird was shot, 



