172 THE INDIAN BUSTARD-QUAIL. 



It affords no sport, and it is never wise to waste a minute on 

 it. If by chance it rises whilst you are beating for Partridges 

 or other Quail, well and good ; but it is an inveterate runner, 

 scarcely to be flushed without dogs, running persistently even 

 before these, and when put up, usually dropping within fifteen 

 or at most twenty yards before you can well shoot it with an 

 ordinary charge without blowing it to pieces. Without dogs it 

 is extremely difficult to induce it to rise even out of a single 

 tuft of grass, which you may almost kick to pieces before the 

 little wretch will accept your il notice to quit." 



The most remarkable point in the life-history of these Bustard- 

 Quails is the extraordinary fashion in which amongst them the 

 position of the sexes is reversed. The females are the larger 

 and handsomer birds. The females only call, the females only 

 right — natives* say that they fight for the males, and probably 

 this is true. What is certain is that, whereas in the case of almost 

 all the other Game Birds it is the males alone that can be caught 

 in spring-cages, &c, to which they are attracted by the calls of 

 other males, and to which they come in view to fighting, in this 

 species no males will ever come to a cage baited with a male, 

 whereas every female within hearing rushes to a cage in which 

 a female is confined,"!* an< ^ ^ allowed to meet during the 

 breeding season, any two females will fight until one or other is 

 dead or nearly so. 



The males, and the males only, as we have now proved in 

 numberless cases, sit upon the eggs, the females meanwhile 



* Col. Tickell says : — 



" The Koles and Uriyas told me it was the hen bird which makes this singular 

 call, and that she is not only (as in right of her sex) more loquacious, but absolutely 

 more pugnacious than her worse half, who appears, in remarkable contrast to all 

 other game or gallinaceous birds, to enjoy an ignoble sinecure in all matters of 

 courtship and connubial arrangements. The hens, in fact, about the commencement 

 of the rains, after a round game of fighting (which lasts for a week or so), select 

 their bridegrooms, with whom 'to hear is to obey,' and so set up house for 

 themselves. Truly a Jerry Sneak kind of affair altogether on the part of these 

 husbands." 



t Dr. Jerdon long ago gave an accurate account of the capture of the females of 

 this species. He said : — 



" 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 

 caged 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 px'ey, 

 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 were carried before the bird-catcher had reached my house." 



