along the base of the sub-Himalayas from the débouché of the
Ganges to the Brahmaputra. This tract, of great extent and
peculiar features, is the favourite habitat of the Florican, which
avoids the mountains entirely, and almost, if not quite as
entirely, the arid and cultivated plains of the Doab, and of the
provinces west of the Jumna. It dwells, indeed, upon plains
exclusively, but never upon nude or cultivated plains. Shelter
of Nature's furnishing is indispensable to it, and it solely inhabits
wide-spreading plains, sufficiently elevated to be free from inundation,
and sufficiently moist to yield a pretty copious crop
of grasses, but grasses not so thick nor so high as to impede
the movements or vision of a well-sized bird that is ever afoot
and always sharply on the look-out. Such extensive, well-clad,
yet uncultivated plains are, however, to be found only on the
left bank of the Ganges, and accordingly I believe that to that
bank the Florican is nearly confined, and to the Tarai portion
thereof.
" T h e moults are two annually—one vernal, from March till
May, and the other autumnal, which is less complete and more
speedily got over, between August and October. The young
males, up to the beginning of March, entirely resemble the females,
but the moult then commencing gradually assimilates them
to the adults, which never lose, as the lesser species or Likh
does, after the courting season, the striking black and white garb
that in both species is proper to the male sex, and permanently
so to the larger species from and after its first year of age. The
young males of a year, however, have the hackles and crest less
developed than those graceful ornaments afterwards become.
There is, properly speaking, no nuptial dress in this Species,
though the hackles and crest in their most entire fulness of
dimensions may be in part regarded as such."
Mr. Blyth, I should notice, asserts that this species, like the
Likh, has a most distinct breeding plumage. He says* : " Mr.
Hodgson is also certainly mistaken in his assertion that the
nuptial dress is worn permanently, as we have witnessed the
change before described, and the subsequent partial renewal of
the breeding livery, which latter was not well developed in
captivity, and have likewise observed the fact in the skins of
wild specimens."
I am in no position to decide this question, and I can only say
that I have certainly killed some birds in the black and white
livery in both January and February, though I also distinctly remember
bagging many more brown than pied ones, when shooting
during the cold season. But these may have been young birds
or females ; I never sexed birds in those days. Two young but
full grown, or nearly full grown, males before me, shot in January,
have the black bodies and white wings of the adult, but the
* Contr. Ornith., 1850, 45.
heads and necks are like those of the females. In one specimen,
shot on the 24th of January, the black plumes are moulting in
about the head and neck also. An adult, killed in March, is
entirely in the black and white livery, though the plumes are
less developed than in full breeding plumage. This is quite in
accordance with Hodgson's observations ; and my own present
impression is, that the majority of, if not all, adult males retain
the black and white plumage permanently, although with the
ruff and plumes much less conspicuous than at the nuptial
season, and that the birds observed to moult into this livery
by Blyth must have been young ones, or birds abnormally depressed
by captivity.
Jerdon, however, thinks that, with the exception of some few
birds—very old ones probably—the males do lose much of the
black plumage during the cold season.
To return to Mr. Hodgson : " The Florican is a shy and wary
bird, entirely avoiding fully-peopled and fully-cultivated districts,
but not averse from the neighbourhood of a few scattered
squatters whose patches of cultivation, particularly of the
mustard plants (Rai, Tori, and Sarson) are acceptable to it as
multiplying its chances of appropriate food.
" This exquisitely-flavoured bird is a rather promiscuous
feeder ; small lizards, young snakes, insects of most sorts, but
above all locusts, and after them, grasshoppers, beetles, the
sprouts and seeds and succulent runners of various grasses,
berries, stony fruits, aromatic lactiferous leaves, and stems of
various small plants, with mustard tops and other dainties,
all contributing to its nourishment. The largest portion of
its usual food is vegetals ; but when insects abound, and especially
locusts, they are almost exclusively eaten. Cerealia are
eschewed ; but plenty of hard-seeded grasses and such like
are taken, and a goodly portion of gravel to digest them.
" The Florican is seldom found in thick cover. When
he is, he lies close, so that you may flush him at your
foot; but in his ordinary haunts, amid the scattered tufts of
more open grass plats he can be neared with difficulty only, and
No. 5 shot and a good heavy gun are required to bring him
down at 40 to 60 yards distance. His flight is strong, with a
frequent rapid even motion of the wings, and if he be at all
alarmed, it is seldom suspended under 200 to 300 yards, whilst
not unfrequently it is continued so as to carry the bird wholly
out of sight and pursuit. When flying, the neck is extended
before the body, and the legs tucked up under it, whereas the
whole family of the Herons fly with neck retracted over the
back, and legs stretched out behind—differences, the rationale
of which can as little be conjectured as that of the gyrations of
the dog ere he lays himself down to repose. The walk of the
Florican, like that of the Heron, is firm and stately, easy and
graceful : he can move afoot with much speed, and is habitu