THE PAINTED SPUR-FOWL. 257 



u It is especially partial to low rocky hills covered with im- 

 penetrable thicket ; it also affects, though more rarely, bamboo 

 jungle. The bird is either met with singly or in pairs ; occa- 

 sionally three or four congregate together. In the early morn- 

 ing and evening the birds descend to the more open spaces at 

 the base of the hills to feed, and from an elevated position may 

 be seen very busy running here . and there feeding. During 

 the day they retire to the inaccessible thickets above. Very 

 wary is the Painted Spur-Fowl. On the slightest alarm it will 

 run quickly up-hill to reach the shelter of its favourite haunts ; 

 once there it is impossible to flush it again. In the more open 

 jungle they are easily flushed, and, though the flight is swift, 

 offer an easy shot. The call is a peculiar loud chzcr> chiir^ chur, 

 rapidly repeated, anything but ' fowl-like.' " 



Colonel Tickell remarks : — 



" In all places, however, its skulking habits cause it to be very 

 seldom seen. It haunts rocky places buried in thorny thickets, 

 sometimes the stony jungly beds of nalas or small rivers, but 

 more generally the isolated granite hills covered with dense 

 brushwood, which are so common a feature in Chota Nagpore. 

 It is generally in beating those huge rocks with large bodies of 

 men, when bear shooting, that the ' Askal' is seen, and I have 

 sometimes observed two or three in the air at a time, flying 

 straight, with rapid action of the wings, much like Jungle-Fowl. 

 They are flushed but once ; and after alighting, run into fissures 

 and holes amongst the rocks, whence there is no dislodging them. 

 At Palgunjo, near the Porahaut Hill, which looks in solitary 

 grandeur over the now-deserted 'Trunk Road,' formerly the 

 great artery of traffic throughout Bengal, I have seen one or two 

 flushed in more open ground, where the scrub was scattered and 

 thin — rocks at some distance, and the chief cover a few shallow 

 ravines." 



Captain Baldwin again says : — 



" The male does not crow like the Jungle-Cock, though both 

 sexes make a kind of clucking noise like a true fowl. When run- 

 ning these birds carry the tail up, not like a Partridge. I have 

 often watched them when hidden behind a bush or rock, waiting 

 for the beat to approach ; sometimes over a dozen have run past 

 me. They move very fast, and seldom take wing till hard- 

 pressed. The flight is swift and rarely at any great height 

 from the ground. The birds take a good hard blow to bring 

 them down." 



As REGARDS THEIR nidification, I have never myself seen a 

 nest, but Mr. Blewitt, writing from Raipur, says : — 



" It breeds certainly from March to May, making simply a 

 slight excavation in the ground for the eggs under the shelter 

 of a boulder or rock in a thicket. Some time in April 1871 



33 



