INDIAN PEAFOWL 169 



jungle, for a number of natives to run down a Peacock and capture it with their hands. 

 The habit of the cocks in keeping to their roosts until the dew is dried up shows 

 that they realize what a handicap is their drenched plumage. 



Their usual gait is too well known to describe. Suffice it to say, that however 

 conscious the cock may be when showing off, much of his ridiculous apparent swagger 

 and stiff-legged strut is due to the mere mechanical effort to keep balanced. In a high 

 wind, these pseudo feelings with which he is credited are correspondingly increased. 



DAILY ROUND OF LIFE 



The Indian Peafowl is omnivorous. This is to be expected in a bird whose haunts 

 include such diversified areas. It is by preponderance of evidence a vegetarian, and the 

 larger part of any one bird's crop will usually be found to be vegetable, either grain of 

 several kinds, or tender grass, or bamboo shoots, and flower petals if the birds inhabit 

 the plains or jungle borders. In the forest itself various berries and small fruits are 

 eaten, favourites being the wild fig {Covillio glomerata) and the korinda {Carissa 

 carandas). Few types of animal life, if small enough, escape them at one time or 

 another : molluscs, insects and grubs of all kinds, worms, small lizards, frogs and even 

 snakes. In some places termites or white ants form a very important article of diet, as 

 they do with other pheasants. 



Most of the Peafowl I secured in south Ceylon were taken in early morning, when 

 the crops were still empty, but a few were shot in the evening. One of these had both 

 the crop and gizzard crammed with panicles of grass seeds. A second had in its crop 

 two hundred pea-like berry-pods, a number of large purple berries, eight or ten large 

 heart-shaped leaves swallowed whole, a few grass seeds and a single walking-stick 

 insect, two inches in length. The berries of this region which formed the favourite 

 food of the Peafowl were known as Uguressa and Walpala. 



Their fondness for berries, fruit, grain and sprouting buds makes them very 

 destructive to the natives' cultivated fields and to young plantations. In some places 

 the farmer has a hard time of it trying to keep his crops from both the sacred Peafowl 

 and the monkeys. He has to resort to most ingenious devices : scare-crows, strings of 

 glistening, jangling tin, or to keep men and women constantly on the watch to frighten 

 off the marauders. 



I have mentioned the item of snakes in the diet of the Peafowl. There are several 

 authentic instances of small snakes being taken from the crops of these birds, but, more 

 than this, there is a fixed belief in all the countries which the Peafowl inhabit that it is 

 the inevitable enemy of snakes great and small. I shall speak of this more in detail on 

 a later page. 



The Peafowl feeds, I believe, wholly on the ground. The fruits, berries and petals 

 are those which have fallen, and the leaves and grain are plucked from low plants. 

 These birds, especially the females, scratch vigorously and unearth grubs, worms and 

 the nesting galleries of termites. In this latter work I have seen them use the strong 

 bill to help pick away the baked earth. 



Peafowl invariably choose to roost among the branches of high, isolated trees. They 

 evidently fear no danger from above, and they find such a position safe from the four- 



VOL. IV 7. 



