THE GREY JUNGLE-FOWL. 235 



other end made fast to a long stick. A number of birds are 

 placed side by side on this stick, which is then carried about 

 on a man's head. The poor blind birds remain quite quiet, not 

 attempting to flutter or escape. 



" Except for his feathers or as a specimen, the Grey Jungle- 

 Cock is hardly worth shooting; the breast alone is really 

 eatable, and even at the best the breast is very dry and hard. 



" They roost on trees. Continually in the early mornings, 

 just at daylight, when out shooting Sambhur, I have disturbed 

 them from the trees on which they had spent the night. 



" Although armed with most formidable spurs, they are not, 

 so far as my experience goes, quarrelsome or pugnacious. In 

 the wild state I have never seen them fighting, and I for many 

 years enjoyed peculiar opportunities for observing them. In 

 captivity half a dozen, with as many females, will live in the 

 same compartment of an aviary in perfect peace. 



"Another proof of their non-belligerent character is to be 

 found in the fact that the native bird-catchers never peg males 

 out to attract others, as they do in every part of the East with 

 all birds that are naturally pugilistic. Scores of times I have 

 listened to two cocks crowing at each other vigorously from 

 closely adjoining patches of cover, but neither apparently ever 

 thinking of, as an American would say, going for that other cock. 



" They are, I think, altogether less plucky birds than the Red 

 Jungle-Fowl, and they are so extremely wary, where birds and 

 animals of prey are concerned, and wander such short dis- 

 tances from the edges of cover, that I think very few of them 

 fall victims to any enemy but man. There are plenty of 

 Bonelli's Eagle and some Hawk-Eagles too in the Nilgiris, but 

 I do not think that these ever succeed in capturing Grey, as they 

 do elsewhere Red, Jungle-Fowl ; at any rate, I have never once 

 seen the feathers of sonnerati strewed about, as I have those of 

 ferrnginens in Burma. 



" Their great timidity and watchfulness result in their yield- 

 ing much less sport than the Red Jungle-Fowl. You may get 

 these latter in standing crops and in many other similar situa- 

 tions without any extraordinary precautions, but the Grey 

 Jungle-Fowl never goes more than a few yards inside the fields, 

 and if a stick cracks, or a sound is heard anywhere within 50 

 yards, he vanishes into the jungle, whence it is impossible to 

 flush him. Only when beating the narrow well-defined belts 

 of tree jungle that run down the ravines on the hill sides in 

 the Nilgiris, and which we there call " sholas," is anything 

 like real sport to be got out of them. Then indeed the gun at the 

 tail end of the shola may get 3 or 4 good shots in succession, 

 as they rise at the end of the cover and fly off with a strong 

 well-sustained flight to the next nearest patch. Even thus, work- 

 ing hard and beating shola after shola, a man will be lucky to 

 bag five or six brace in a day. 



