124 THE PAINTED BUSH-QUAIL. 



met with a dozen or more coveys on the road in a morning's ride 

 between Coonoor and Ooty. They are tame little birds, and will 

 seldom rise when met with on a road unless hard pressed or 

 suddenly surprised ; they content themselves with running on 

 ahead, occasionally stopping to pick up a grain or an insect, 

 until they think they are being too closely followed, when they 

 quietly slip out of sight into the first bit of cover they come to. 



" When retreating, they keep uttering a very rapidly and 

 continually repeated note, in a very low tone, hardly to be 

 heard unless when one is quite close to them. 



" When flushed they do, as a rule, rise, as Jerdon says, all 

 together, usually scattering in different directions, but this is by no 

 means invariably the case, and sometimes, even before a dog, they 

 will rise singly, or in couples, several minutes often intervening 

 between the rise of the first and last birds. With dogs they are 

 always easily flushed, but if there be no dog to press them, 

 after having been once disturbed, they will either lie very 

 close or dodge and run about amongst the bushes in a most 

 persistent and disheartening manner. I have occasionally 

 marked a bird into an isolated bush, which I have had to 

 kick and trample to pieces before the bird would rise. 



" Their call is a series of whistling notes, commencing very 

 soft and low, and ending high and rather shrill, the first part of 

 the call being composed of single, the latter of double, notes 

 sounding something like tu-tu-tu-tu-tutu-tutu-tutu, &c. When 

 a covey has been flushed and scattered, one bird commences 

 after a few minutes calling in a very low tone, another imme- 

 diately taking it up, then another, and so on. They then begin 

 cautiously to reunite, uttering all the time their low note of 

 alarm, moving very slowly, with continual halts while in cover, 

 but dashing rapidly across any open space they may have to cross. 



" When calling to each other after having been scattered, the 

 call is uttered in a very low tone, so that it appears to come 

 from a long distance off, though the bird may be within a few 

 feet of one. Perhaps the birds ventriloquize, and that it is not 

 only the lowness of the tone that so misleads one. 



" They are, of course, permanent residents on the Nilgirls 

 and in the Wynad, and, from my experience, I may go further 

 and say that they seldom wander far from the place in which 

 they were bred. 



" They are very easily snared, the simplest way being to stretch 

 tightly a bit of string, say four or five yards long, and about six 

 inches above the ground, in any place frequented by the birds, and 

 to this string to suspend, closely placed side by side, a number 

 of horse-hair nooses, after sprinkling a little grain along both sides 

 of the line. The birds, in moving about from one side to the other, 

 picking up the grain, get the nooses round their necks, and soon 

 strangle themselves ; but this ruins the birds as specimens, as the 

 noose always cuts the birds' necks, and often nearly severing the 



