THE GREY PARTRIDGE. 55 



Col. Tickell's account of one mode of capture is full and in- 

 teresting. He says : — 



" The pugnacious disposition of this bird renders it one of the 

 easiest of all game to catcb, and there is hardly a village in the 

 wilder parts of Upper and Western Bengal where this amuse- 

 ment is not carried on. For this purpose, a tame one is placed 

 in a small cage covered with strong horse-hair nooses, and carried 

 out of an evening or early morning to the jungle. On arriving 

 at a likely spot, the fowler blows two or three times upon the 

 bird in the cage, an act which has the invariable effect of 

 rousing the little captive into fury. It answers every puff by a 

 shrill cry, and in a minute or so goes off into a paroxysm of 

 rage and defiance, screaming and cackling challenges to all 

 comers, in which state it is placed on the ground, dancing about 

 in its cage, while the fowler retires behind some neighbouring 

 bush to watch operations. The decoy bird's calls have been 

 answered probably all round the coppice by the time its master 

 is hidden, and ere long an exceedingly diverting scene, which I 

 have more than once witnessed in Singhbhoom, ensues. One by 

 one the wild cock birds, whose crows have been audible nearer and 

 nearer, emerge from the covert, heads up, wings down, and tails 

 spread, and, after showing off in a species of war-dance before 

 the cage, the nearest rushes at it with a charge that would send 

 it rolling off the scene were it not securely pegged to the ground. 

 The bird within and the bird without engage furiously, a la 

 Pyramus and Thisbe — but with kicks instead of kisses — through 

 the intervening wall, till after a few interchanges of this nature, 

 the assailant finds himself fast by the leg in one of the nooses. 

 The fowler runs out, detaches the captive, and retreats with it 

 to his ambuscade, whereupon the other wild birds, which have 

 been scared away at sight of the man, quickly re-assemble, and 

 the same scene is enacted with another champion, and so on, 

 da capo, till the whole are secured, or till the decoy bird has be- 

 come exhausted and sulky." 



The Grey Partridge is found and breeds throughout the 

 more open and drier plains country of India Proper. It eschews 

 equally the more humid tracts of Lower Bengal, the Duns 

 and Terais that skirt the bases of the Himalayas, and the dense 

 forests and forest-clad hills of Southern, Central, and Eastern 

 India. 



It breeds regularly twice a year, laying from the first week in 

 February to the first week in June, and again from the middle of 

 July to early in November. But I think that there are always 

 more nests to be found in the spring than in the autumn, 

 and I suppose, therefore, that all the birds do not have a second 

 brood. 



The nest, when there is one — for I have repeatedly found 

 the eggs on the bare ground — varies from a few blades of grass, 



