36 THE LESSER FLORICAN OR LIKH. 



" The largest bag I ever knew of was one of ten couple 

 shot by four guns in the Eklagan Kuran, near Dharangaon, in 

 Khandesh. 



" Pardis, the professional poachers* of the Deccan, snare 

 them along with Partridges and Quail, simply by setting a 

 rope of snares down the grassy bank of a dry nalla and then 

 beating the bushes. 



" It is perfectly true that sometimes the effects caused by eating 

 Florican's flesh after they have been feeding on blisterflies are 

 most painful and disagreeable. I myself have suffered from this 

 cause." 



As a bird for the table (setting aside exceptional cases like 

 this), they vary very much ; they are never to be compared, 

 I think, to a fine Bengal Florican, and I have often found them 

 dry and hard, much like a Blue Pigeon. 



Mr. Davidson says :— < u Florican are found sparingly in Mysore, 

 but I only saw one on two occasions in the Tumkur district, 

 during last year. It is a migrant during the rains to 

 Western Guzerat, where it is remorselessly shot down while breed- 

 ing, but apparently avoids the Panch Mahals almost entirely ; 

 at least only one specimen has been secured there during the 

 last few years. 



" They are ordinarily shot in the Deccan in the long grass 

 bhirs, being flushed by a line of beaters, the guns walking 

 along with the beaters. In the breeding season the cocks are 

 sometimes shot in the following way : — In the early morning 

 the gunner, for one can hardly call him a sportsman, goes to a 

 bhir, where he knows there are birds, and waits tell he sees one 

 jump up in the grass and cry. He then stalks within 50 or 

 60 yards, and again waits till the bird jumps and then runs 

 as fast as he can towards the spot. The bird generally rises 

 30 or 40 yards off, and there is a fair amount of excitement, if 

 not of sport, in shooting them this way." 



Dr. Jerdon says : — " I have found the cock bird commencing 

 to assume the black plumage at the end of April, and have killed 

 them with the black ear-tuft just beginning to sprout, hardly 

 any other black feathers having appeared. In other instances, 

 I have noticed that these ear-tufts did not make their appearance 

 till the bird was quite mottled with black. The full and perfect 

 breeding plumage is generally completed during July and 

 August. At this season the male bird generally takes up a 

 position on some rising ground (from which it wanders but 

 little for many days even), and during the morning specially, 

 but in cloudy weather at all times of the day, every now and then 

 rises a few feet perpendicularly into the air, uttering at the same 

 time a peculiar croaking call, more like that of a frog or cricket 

 than that of a bird, and then drops down again. This is probably 



* Not half such bad poachers, I submit, as the English gentlemen who slaughter 

 game birds, male and female, in the middle of the breeding season. 



