764 TURNIX TAIGOOE. 



Jerdon has the following paragraph on the habits of the females and the advantage taken of them by 

 the native bird-catchers. He writes : — " The hen birds are most pugnacious, especially about the breeding- 

 season ; and this propensity is made use of, in the south of India, to effect their capture. For this 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 protected. 

 The decoy-bird begins her loud purring call, which can be heard a long way off ; and any females within ear- 

 shot run rapidly to the spot, and commence fighting with the cage-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, secures his prey, and sets the cage again in 

 another locality. In this way I have known twelve to twenty 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 time ; for I have frequently 

 known instances of some eight or ten of those captured so far advanced in the process as to lay their eggs in 

 the bag in which they are carried before the bird-catcher had reached my house." 



They fight like the common hen, stretching up their heads and trying to circumvent each other, pecking 

 out vigorously all the while. When undisturbed they have a low " grunting " note, which they continue to 

 utter while running about in cover. Their diet consists chiefly of seeds ; but I have always found insects in 

 the stomachs of specimens I have examined. The larvae of grasshoppers is included by Jerdon among their 

 food; and he rightly remarks that their flesh is excellent, being succulent and tasty. When "walking" up 

 these Quail without a dog the females are usually flushed, and one rarely succeeds in putting up a male. 



Nidification. — In the south of Ceylon, as well as in the north-west, this Quail lays from February till 

 May, and most likely has another brood later in the year. The nest is placed in a depression scraped in the 

 ground under the shelter of a tussock or bush, and is made of grass and dry leaves loosely put together, but 

 forming rather a bulky structure, with a deep hollow in the middle. The eggs vary from two to four in 

 number, and are very large, particularly as regards diameter, for the size of the bird. Some are much pointed 

 at the small end, others are more in the shape of pointed ovals, but always very broad. The ground-colour 

 is dull greyish white, thickly freckled all over with dark brown, over w r hich there are largish spots of blackish 

 scattered here and there; in others there are inky-grey blotches and large blotches of black, whilst in some 

 the very dark markings are entirely wanting. They measure from O90 to 098 inch in length by from 0'69 to 

 0"75 inch in breadth. 



I have found the male sitting on the eggs ; and Captain Butler relates catching a male bird in a hair 

 noose he set by a nest ; so that the habit of the female to depute her partner to assist in the duties of incubation 

 would appear general. 



In India this species lays from June to September, according to locality, commencing earlier in the south 

 than in the Carnatic. Mr. Hume remarks : — " Sometimes it makes no nest at all, and merely scratches a 

 hollow at the base of, or in the midst of, some tuft of Sirpatta grass, or occasionally some little dense bush 

 adjoining or surrounded by long grass. Sometimes it makes a little pad of grass 3 or at the most 4 inches in 

 diameter and half an inch in thickness, which it places as a lining to the hollow." Jerdon tells us that the 

 females are said by the natives of India to desert the eggs, and that the males hatch them. Judging by the 

 details already referred to on this head, it would seem probable that this assertion is correct. Mr. Hume 

 characterizes the stippling on the surface of the eggs as a "mixture of miuute dots of yellowish and reddish 

 brown and pale purple." The average size of thirty eggs, according to him, is 093 by 079 inch. 



