4 THE SARUS. 
yet object to their being interfered with, I have myself watched 
them from distances of forty or fifty yards without attracting 
their attention. 
When the young are still only half grown, say up to the end 
of the year, both old birds may often be observed to seize some 
morsel and call one of the young to eat it; and again, when 
down by the water, they may be seen pluming and adjusting 
the toilette of their progeny. Later, though the young often 
keep with them as late as March, they do not, I think, feed them, 
though they still call to them, and warn them if any suspicious 
object appears. Later again in the spring, the pair may be seen 
standing, side by side, in the shallow water, pluming and fond- 
ling each other most affectionately ; and, though in captivity and 
in a semi-domesticated state, they seem to be rather ill-condi- 
tioned, spiteful birds, where men, and especially children and 
dogs, are concerned, pecking savagely at the eyes of these with- 
out provocation, in their wild state, amongst themselves, they 
appear to be most gentle loving creatures. 
They rise off the ground with some little difficulty, always 
taking a run of some yards before actually getting on the wing 
the heavy strokes of their powerful pinions resounding mean- 
while far and wide. But when once off, their flight is very 
strong ; and though, from the noise attending it, it seems 
laboured, it is continued at times, without apparent effort and 
voluntarily, for several miles, but never, so far as my experience 
goes, at any great height above the ground. In March and 
April, one year, in Etawah, a pair that I got to recognize from 
meeting them constantly at different points along their course, 
used to come down every day about 8 o’clock in the morning to 
the banks of the Jumna from high ground (about five miles 
distant) which, during some months of the year, contained a 
large piece of water, and during some months more,a daily 
diminishing swampy pool. Throughout this long flight, I do not 
believe that they ever rose above twenty yards from the ground. 
I do not think that they ever, in India, rise high in air, and 
circle round and round as other Cranes do, even the Australian 
“ Native Companion,” which, in most other respects, so closely 
resembles our Indian bird. 
Their food is very varied—frogs, lizards and all small reptiles, 
insects of all kinds, snail and other land and water shells, seeds, 
grains and small fruits of various kinds, green vegetable 
matter, and the bulbous roots of various species of aquatic 
plants—all contribute to their nutriment ; and they seem to feed 
indifferently in wet and dry fields, on dry grassy uplands, on 
the margins and in the shallows, of rivers, broads and swamps. 
They walk alike on land and in water fully eighteen inches 
deep, easily and gracefully, but withal in a_ slow, stately 
manner, lifting each leg deliberately and rather high. The 
land, or land and water, seem more to their taste than the air, 
