In some parts of India this bird has been exterminated, owing to the demands of the plume-market.
This bird displays great courage and affection in defence of its eggs or young. A story illustrating this is told of a gentleman near Spilsby, in Lincolnshire, who, "whilst superintending his ploughmen, saw a partridge glide off her nest, so near the foot of one of his plough-horses that he thought the eggs must be crushed; this, however, was not the case.... He saw the old bird return to her nest the instant he left the spot. It was evident that the next round of the plough must bury the eggs and nest in the furrow. His surprise was great when, returning with the plough, he came to the spot and saw the nest indeed, but the eggs and bird were gone. An idea struck him that she had removed her eggs; and he found her, before he left the field, sitting under the hedge upon twenty-one eggs.... The round of ploughing had occupied about twenty minutes, in which time she, probably aided by the cock bird, had removed the twenty-one eggs to a distance of about forty yards."
The Red-legged Partridges, their allies the Francolins, and the Grey Partridges are all ground-birds; the Tree-partridges, as the name implies, are not, or at least less completely so—hence their mention here. They are natives of the Indo-Chinese countries, and the islands of Java, Borneo, and Formosa.
Photo by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S.] [Regent's Park.
HIMALAYAN MONAL.
The female of the monal is quite soberly clad.
The Quail is a little-known British bird, very like a small partridge in appearance. Enormous numbers, Professor Newton tells us, "are netted on the Continent, especially in the spring migration. The captives are exposed in the poulterers' shops, confined in long, cloth-covered cages, with a feeding-trough in front." The bulk "of these are males, which are the first to arrive, and advantage is taken of this circumstance by the bird-catchers, who decoy hundreds into their nets by imitating the call-note of the female. It has been stated that in the small island of Capri, in the Bay of Naples, 160,000 have been netted in a single season, and even larger numbers are on record." An idea of the vast numbers which travel together in migration may be gathered from Canon Tristram's statement that in Algeria, in April, he found the ground covered with quails for an extent of many acres at daybreak, where on the preceding afternoon not one was to be seen. These are the birds which were so eagerly seized by the Israelites as a welcome change in the diet which had become so monotonous in the days of their early wanderings. The story, so vividly told in the Book of Exodus, is, of course, familiar to all.
Photo by C. Reid] [Wishaw, N.B.