20 THE II0UBARA.
as do the little ones. Generally, however, if the time be between
10 and 4, and the day bright and warm, as your spiral
diminishes the birds disappear suddenly. They have squatted.
Still you go on round and round, closing in in each lap, and straining
your eyes, usually in vain, to discover their whereabouts ;
suddenly, perhaps from under the very feet of the camel, up
flutters one of the birds, and after a few strides, rises, to fall
dead a few yards further on, as they are easy to hit and easy
to kill. Of course, I suppose a trained camel to be used, otherwise,
what with flies, keeping up a perpetual twitching of every
part of the beast's head, neck and body, and its natural suspicions
that you and your gun are up to no good, you will
find it by no means difficult to miss even a Houbara, especially
if you do not remember always so to slew your camel round
as to have the bird well on your left side.
At the first shot, all the Houbara that are at all close usually
rise, but after shooting a brace right and left, and having them
picked up and slung, I have known a third blunder up from
within a few yards.
Often, especially when you are out alone, and after breaking
up a large flock (which it is always best to do), are working a
single bird, you close in and in until you reach the very bush
by which you last saw it, and yet can find no trace of it. You
pull up, as this generally starts the bird, but sometimes even
then nothing is to be seen. The way they will squat at times
on an absolutely bare patch of sand is astonishing ; their plumage
harmonizes perfectly with the soil, and you will have a
bird rise suddenly, apparently out of the earth, within five yards
of you, from a spot where there is not a blade of cover, and on
which your eyes have perhaps been fixed for some seconds.
This is especially the case about mid-day, when the sun is
nearly vertical and no shadow is thrown by the squatting bird.
Sometimes they try another plan ; they get behind a single
bush, and, as you circle round, they do the same, always keeping
the bush between themselves and the sportsman; here, unless
the sun is quite vertical, their shadow projected on the ground,
apart from that of the bush, is sure, at certain positions in the
circle, to betray them, and a shot through the bush brings them
to bag.
In some parts of the country, the Houbara greatly affect
fields of mustard and other crops yielding the oil-seeds of
commerce, of which there is a vast variety, known by half a
dozen different names, in almost every province.
When these fields are well grown, and are, say, a little higher
than the bird itself stands, exceptionally good sport may at
times be obtained.
They cannot run here, the growth is too dense, and a line
of guns and beaters, sweeping a large field of this kind into
which a flock has been marked, will often account for the whole
THE HOUBARA. 2 1
party, flushing them like so many Pheasants out of a dense
turnip field, with buckwheat lines, along a cover side.
I have occasionally seen them in wheat, barley, and other grain
fields, but only when these were young and tender.
Very large bags of Houbara are sometimes made. In the
western parts of the Sirsa district, in years in which they are
plentiful (for the numbers that visit us are variable, dependent
on the rainfall further west), any man could shoot twenty in a
day; and General Marston, while Superintendent of Police in
the Kurrachee district, shot, I believe, forty-eight (and some
people say /f/?j'-eight) on one occasion.
Both in Sind and in the Punjab natives often hawk them, but
they afford but little sport; and, so far as my personal experience
goes, generally drop so sharp into cover that the Falcon as a
rule stoops in vain.
Two or three times I have seen them nobly struck by wild
Bonelli's Eagles, and wounded birds are often struck by other
Eagles, notably the common vindhiana.
T H I S S P E C I E S does not breed in India Proper, though it does
in Affghanistan, and (though I believe sparingly), in the highlands
of Beluchistan. I have never seen an egg, and have no
authentic account of its nidification. It doubtless, as Kabulis
have told me, lays in some small depression in the soil, two or three
eggs, very similar to, probably (except for their somewhat smaller
size) undistinguishable from those of the African bird, which
are broad ovals, somewhat pointed towards each end, "olivaceous
brown, tolerably regularly marked with somewhat blurred
broad dashes of darker brown, and here and there spotted
with clear blackish brown," measuring from 2'3 to 2'5 in
length, by 175 to ro, in breadth.
J E R D O N S U G G E S T E D that the ruff and crest might in this species
be peculiar to the male, and the former only seasonal; but,
as I pointed out long ago (Ibis, 1868), both these are
equally possessed by both sexes at all seasons, though both
are more developed in the male than in the female. The youngest
birds I have seen had a few short crest feathers and a small,
but very apparent, ruff.
The sexes, except as regards length of ruff and crest, are
nearly alike in plumage, though the female is a little lighter
in colour ; the chief difference consists in the size, the males
being considerably larger.
The adult males measure as follows :—
Length, 28 to 30-25; expanse, 51-5 to 5 7 7 5 ; wing, 15
to i6'i ; tail from vent, 8'5 to 10^25 ; tarsus, 3-4 to 3^9; bill
from gape, 2-3 to 2'4. Weight, 4 to 5^ lbs. Sir John Malcolm,
in his Sketches of Persia, states that a Houbara killed before