34 THE LESSER FLORICAN OR LIKH. 



In years when the rainfall is plentiful, they are pretty com- 

 mon during the monsoon a little south of Delhi in Rohtak and 

 Gurgaon. Generally, there are a good many about Jhansi and 

 so on, but, except as stragglers, they are not found in those parts 

 of the country that I know further north than a line joining Sirsa 

 and Delhi, nor do they cross the Jumna in any numbers. 



Although I have known single specimens killed near Luck- 

 now, Sultanpur, and other places in Oudh ; though I have 

 myself shot single birds occasionally in the Meerut and Etawah 

 districts ; though Ball got a specimen in Sirguja, Hodgson 

 others in the valley of Nepal* ; though Jerdon says he has 

 known of their occurrence in Purneah, and Parker tells me they 

 have occurred in Nuddea ; though one specimen has been killed 

 on the Mekran coast near Gwader, and another at Sandoway in 

 Arakan, I do not, as at present informed, consider that either 

 Beluchistan, the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces, north 

 and east of the Jumna, Oudh, Chota Nagpore or any part of 

 Bengal, or the countries eastwards, can be properly included 

 within its normal range. 



It occurs nowhere out of India. 



The black plumage assumed by the male in the breeding 

 season (so different from its brown cold weather suit, which is 

 like the female's,) and its migratory habits (sportsmen in one 

 place never meeting with black males, and in others seeing none 

 but these) led in past times to the belief that there were two 

 distinct species. Jerdon, however, conclusively disposed of this 

 error, and it is needless perhaps to allude further to it here. 



Slightly undulating plains, covered by patches of grass and 

 low scrub jungle, are the favourite haunts of the Likh, but 

 during the cold season they are often found feeding in millet 

 fields and others in which the crops are not too high or dense. 



Owing to the unsportsmanlike manner in which these 

 beautiful birds are massacred during the breeding season, they 

 are everywhere diminishing perceptibly in numbers, and will, in 

 another half century, be, I fear, almost extinct, 



Mr. Davidson writes : — " The Lesser Florican is much com- 

 moner than the Bustard in the Deccan, but it also is diminishing 

 very fast, and in Sholapur we could notice a diminution yearly." 



And so write a dozen others, who still stick to the infamous 

 poaching so universally practised. Get them in the cold season 

 in short grass or springing crops, young wheat about a foot 

 high for instance, and they are about the most difficult bird I 

 know to get near. In fact, on several occasions I have found it 



* At the same time I am bound to say that Mr. Hodgson, in a MS. note on this 

 species, says : "Appears here (Valley of Nepal) about middle of May and disappears 

 middle of June." I do not gather that he got many specimens, but whence could 

 these birds come in May and June ? Not from Southern India. It may be that there 

 is a permanent colony of this species, of which I know nothing as yet, in Nor- 

 thern Behar, Gorakhpur, Basti, &c. 



