THE SARUS, 3 
Its habits vary somewhat, both according to season and to 
locality. In most places it feeds during the day, in fields or 
open plains, and in the forenoon, at some hour, and again in the 
evening, comes down to water, where it mostly spends the 
night. Some, however, live entirely in swamps and about large 
lakes, and rarely leave the immediate neighbourhood of these at 
any time, | 
During the dry weather they are concentrated in the few 
localities where water is available, but during the rains they are 
more equally distributed over the country. But whether in 
large or small numbers, they are always in pairs, each pair 
acting independently of the other pairs, though necessarily 
their habits and the hours they keep at the same locality in the 
same season, being identical, they often move together, and thus 
to a certain extent seem to keep, at times, in flocks. During 
the autumn and cold season most of the pairs are accompanied 
by one, two, or rarely three, young ones, over whom they watch 
with great solicitude. 
They certainly pair for life, and palpably exhibit great grief 
for the loss of their mate, keeping for weeks, at times, about 
the locality where their partner was killed, and calling con- 
stantly. Generally, after a week or ten days, the survivor dis- 
appears, and, it is to be hoped, finds consolation elsewhere with 
a new mate; but on two occasions I have actually known the 
widowed bird to pine away and die; in the one case my 
dogs caught the bird in a field, where it had retreated to die, 
literally starved to death; in the other, the bird disappeared, 
and a few days later we found the feathers in a field, where it 
had obviously fallen a prey to jackals. In both these cases 
I had killed the birds by accident, shooting at other things 
with a rifle; but I confess, with sorrow, that in my younger, 
thoughtless days, I have often purposely killed them, simply for 
practice. If absolutely required for food, (and the liver is very 
good eating, and many of the lower castes of natives will eat 
the bodies) or as specimens, of course they may be shot (though 
even then I share the native prejudice that it is best to kill the 
pair), but otherwise it is, I think, a sin to kill them. 
I say this, because, including them amongst the “ Game 
Birds,” it might be thought that we look upon them as fit objects 
of sport. But the fact is that two of our Cranes are really 
this, and we have only included the Sarus and the Snow-Wreath 
Crane, in order that our account of the several Indian species 
of the genus might not be incomplete. 
Where not shot at, they are extremely tame, and unsus- 
picious of men, especially of natives, often allowing these to 
pass within twenty yards without taking wing, and in parts of 
India, as in Rajputana and the Central India Agency, where 
the natives, although not attaching to them the religious 
reverence which they do to Pea-Fow! and Blue-Rock Pigeons, 
