1 88 THE INDIAN BUTTON-QUAIL. 



I can only hope that all my readers will shoot and send me 

 specimens of any Button Quails they meet with. 



JUDGING BY my own experience, I should say that the Indian 

 Button-Quail normally affected moderately high grass patches ; 

 by choice, patches in neglected gardens, groves, and other enclo- 

 sures, but also frequently grass patches in the midst of forests, 

 in scrub jungle, in fallow fields, or even on the margins of culti- 

 vated ones. I have never met with it in open sandy places, nor 

 on low gravelly uplands, and I can scarcely ever remember 

 to have flushed it out of any growing crops, though I have found 

 it in thick grass growing along the edges of these. 



Still, I have seen comparatively few, and have paid no special 

 attention to the subject ; and Colonel Tickell says "this is a soli- 

 tary bird, found scattered about here and there throughout Bengal 

 in open, sandy, bushy places in and about jungles or fields and 

 dry meadows in cultivated country ; frequently in low, gravelly 

 hills or uplands of 'khunkur' (nodular limestone). It is met 

 with on both sides of the Ganges, at least as high up as 

 Benares. " 



Jerdon also tells us that — 



"This species is found in open grassy glades in forests or 

 jungles, both on the plains and, more especially, in hilly 

 countries, and is also found in grass jungles throughout 

 Bengal, and the countries to the eastward ( ?). It is always seen 

 singly, in patches of long grass or thick cultivation, flying but 

 a short distance, and is very difficult to flush a second time." 



Perhaps, therefore, the bird is not elsewhere so wedded to the 

 grass as I have always found it in the North-Western Provinces, 

 Oudh, and the Central Provinces. 



It is, as both authors quoted truly say, a very solitary and, 

 I may add, (except possibly during the breeding season), a very 

 silent bird. You may flush several, though this is rare, out of a 

 small patch, say half an acre of grass ; but I do not think I ever 

 put up more than one at a time, or that I ever heard one call, at 

 any rate to recognize its note. 



Its flight is even feebler and shorter than that of the Bustard- 

 Quail ; it rises only when you are about to step on it, with 

 occasionally a low double chirp, barely audible to my ears. 

 When flushed, it rises with much less noise and whirr than do 

 the Bustard-Quails. It glides, bee-like, through the air for a few 

 paces, just skimming the waving tops of the grass, and drops 

 suddenly, as if paralysed, almost before you can bring your gun 

 to the shoulder. 



Smart little dogs will readily find it after it has thus dropped, 

 and as often as not (so pertinaciously does it cling to its hiding 

 place) will seize it on the ground, but with only beaters it is 

 almost useless trying to put up one of these Button-Quails a 

 second time. 



