PAINTED SPUR-FOWL. 57 



coverts ; primaries earthy brown ; tail dark sepia brown, glossed 

 with green in old birds ; beneath, the throat and neck are varie- 

 gated black and white, changing on the breast to ochreous buff, 

 with small triangular black marks, which disappear on the abdomen ; 

 the flanks, thigh-coverts, and under tail-coverts dull chesnut. 



Bill blackish ; orbits red ; irides red brown ; legs horny brown. 

 Length 13 inches ; wing 6 ; tail 5 ; tarsus 1J. 



The female has the top of the head dusky, with the forehead, 

 over the eye, and the nape tinged with chesnut ; a pale ruff 

 and moustachial line ; the rest of the plumage dull olive brown, 

 changing to ochreous-olive on the breast and abdomen. 



Length 12 i inches. 



The male has generally two spurs on each leg, occasionally three, 

 and the hen bird has almost always one, frequently two. Young 

 males have the general plumage of females, with the tertiaries 

 and tail chesnut brown, with black bands ; and young females 

 have blackish lunulations on part of their plumage. 



The Painted Spur-fowl is not found on the Malabar Coast nor 

 on the Neiigherries, but is common in several of the isolated 

 hill ranges of Southern India, and all along the Eastern Ghats 

 which are more scantily clad with forest than those on the Malabar 

 Coast ;• also in rocky hills about Hyderabad in the Deccan, and 

 thence sparingly through Central India, and the Saugor and 

 Nerbudda territories to the Monghyr and Mirzapore hills, and 

 perhaps still further West, the male bird being figured in Hard- 

 wicke's Illustrations as from Cawnpore. A writer in the Bengal 

 Sporting Review states that he has seen them in the Cuttack jungles ; 

 but in Goomsoor, a little further south, I saw only the Red Spur- 

 fowl. The same writer states them to be frequently seen on the 

 hilly parts of the Grand Trunk Road. Either this or the last 

 species is called the ' Nerbudda Chukor' in some pages of the 

 same periodical. 



This handsome Spur-fowl is especially partial to rocky jungles 

 and tangled coverts, and is a very difficult bird to flush, taking 

 a short and rapid flight, and diving down into some impenetrable 

 thicket. I have often seen it running rapidly across rocks when the 

 jungles were being beaten for large game. From the difficulty 



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