28 THE BENGAL FLORICAN. 



it has been burnt, and when fresh herbage has sprung up on 

 the burnt portions. 



" On two occasions I have shot birds in a wet rice field when 

 I was out Snipe shooting — once in the beginning of October, near 

 Dibrugarh, and another time in February, close under the Naga 

 hills. 



" I have put up no less than four Florican, all females, with- 

 in a radius of 30 yards, but have never put up a cock and hen 

 quite close to each other. 



"The first time a bird is disturbed, it will rise almost im- 

 mediately, but afterwards it becomes very wary, and generally 

 runs a long distance. I have known birds to lie quite close, and 

 allow a line of elephants to pass them, and then get up behind 

 the line. As a rule, birds, when first flushed, always settle within 

 sight. 



" I have shot well grown young birds in December, and that 

 without putting up others anywhere near them, so I fancy the 

 young leave the mother before this. All the young that I have 

 seen have been in female plumage." 



Mr. Anley says: — "The real home of the Florican is in the 

 Bhutan Duars. They are there found in the standing crops of 

 rice, and when these are cut, they retreat to the numerous 

 patches of short fine ooloo grass, from which they derive their 

 trivial name. In February and March they still keep to the ooloo 

 grass, but near water, which becomes scarce about this time, and 

 where the stunted cardamom, of which they are very fond, is found. 



" They are very common in the Duars, and a beat through 

 a patch of ooloo grass, however small, is pretty safe to turn 

 out at least one. I have seen as many as twenty together of a 

 morning." 



Writing from the Naga hills, Mr. Damant says: — "The Florican 

 is not found in this district, but I have seen it in the low ground 

 and chars which lie along the foot of the Ga.ro hills, where it 

 is common, and where eight or ten may often be bagged in a 

 morning, but it is rather shy there, and must be stalked on foot. I 

 have also seen the Florican in the south of Dinagepore and in the 

 Maldah district, but it is not very abundant in either of these 

 places. 



" I may add that the Florican is unknown in Manipur." 



Col. Comber writes : — " The Florican occurs throughout Assam, 

 but they are not so plentiful in the upper as in the central and 

 lower districts, probably owing to there being more forests 

 and less grass jungle in the former than in the latter. 



" In many places they are very common, and ten or more are 

 killed in a single day. 



" The Florican breeds with us, and the young birds begin to 

 fly about, by the end of August or early in September. 



" In the early part of the cold season one sees little of the bird, 

 but later on they are more easily met with. They then resort 



