In years when the rainfall is plentiful, they are pretty common
during the monsoon a little south of Delhi in Rohtak and
Gurgaon. Generally, there are a good many about Jhansi and
so on, but, except as stragglers, they are not found in those parts
of the country that I know further north than a line joining Sirsa
and Delhi, nor do they cross the Jumna in any numbers.
Although I have known single specimens killed near Lucknow,
Sultanpur, and other places in Oudh ; though I have
myself shot single birds occasionally in the Mecrut and Etawah
districts ; though Ball got a specimen in Sirguja, Hodgson
others in the valley of Nepal*; though Jerdon says he has
known of their occurrence in Purneah, and Parker tells me they
have occurred in Nuddea ; though one specimen has been killed
on the Mekran coast near Gwader, and another at Sandoway in
Arakan, I do not, as at present informed, consider that either
Beluchistan, the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces, north
and east of the Jumna, Oudh, Chota Nagpore or any part of
Bengal, or the countries eastwards, can be properly included
within its normal range.
It occurs nowhere out of India.
THE BLACK plumage assumed by the male in the breeding
season (so different from its brown cold weather suit, which is
like the female's,) and its migratory habits (sportsmen in one
place never meeting with black males, and in others seeing none
but these) led in past times to the belief that there were two
distinct species. Jerdon, however, conclusively disposed of this
error, and it is needless perhaps to allude further to it here.
Slightly undulating plains, covered by patches of grass and
low scrub jungle, are the favourite haunts of the Likh, but
during the cold season they are often found feeding in millet
fields and others in which the crops are not too high or dense.
Owing to the unsportsmanlike manner in which these
beautiful birds are massacred during the breeding season, they
are everywhere diminishing perceptibly in numbers, and will, in
another half century, be, I fear, almost extinct.
Mr. Davidson writes :— " The Lesser Florican is much commoner
than the Bustard in the Deccan, but it also is diminishing
very fast, and in Sholapur we could notice a diminution yearly."
And so write a dozen others, who still stick to the infamous
poaching so universally practised. Get them in the cold season
in short grass or springing crops, young wheat about a foot
high for instance, and they are about the most difficult bird I
know to get near. In fact, on several occasions I have found it
* At the same time I am bound to say that Mr. Hodgson, in a MS. note on this
species, says : " A p p e a r s here (Valley of Nepal) about middle of May and disappears
middle of June." I do not gather that he got many specimens, but whence could
these birds come in May and June ? Not from Southern India. It may be that there
is a permanent colony of this species, of which I know nothing as yet, in Northern
Behar, Gorakhpur, Basti, &c.
impossible to shoot them in any other way than by lying down
behind some bush, and having them driven over me. There is
some little sport in shooting them thus, but as for the common
practice of butchering breeding birds, it is a disgrace to our
country, which all true sportsmen should band together to suppress.
Captain Butler writes:—" For my part, I have always
protested against the wholesale destruction of these fine birds in
the breeding season, and tried very hard, when I was in Deesa, to
persuade sportsmen (!) to spare the hens. But it was of no use ;
they argued that, ' if they didn't shoot them, some one else
would,' and consequently the Florican were shown no mercy.
" The usual method of shooting them is to walk them up in
line, when they rise usually within easy shot. They are easily
killed, and I have seen longer shots made at Florican than any
other bird I know. In fact they drop if you fire at them
at almost any possible distance (provided, of course, you
hold the gun straight). At times, however, after being marked
down, they are very difficult to find, as they commence running
the moment they alight, and often get 200 or 300 yards away
before you reach the spot where you have marked them down.
But for this, scarcely a bird would escape.
" I n the breeding season the cock birds, for some conjugal
reason, indulge in an amusement called ' jumping,' and it is
in this way that their whereabouts are usually discovered.
" Shikaris go out and watch the grass preserves in the
early mornings from some elevated spot, and can tell almost
to a single bird how many Florican there are on the ground.
"The operation of'jumping' is as follows: About every
quarter of an hour, sometimes oftener, the cock birds suddenly
rise up out of the grass to a height of six or seven feet, utter a
peculiar croak, and descend into the grass again with outspread
wings, making a drumming sound as they descend.
Unless disturbed, they always remain about the same spot, so
that, by sending a ' shikari' to mark them down in the early
morning when they are'jumping,'you know exactly where to
find them in the day time.
" About Deesa eight to nine brace in a day was, I think, the
largest bag that was made during the three years I was there,
but in Kathiawar, about Rajkot, bags of as many as eighteen
and twenty brace are occasionally still made in a day."
Mr. James says:—" The ordinary way in which a single gun
pursues Florican is to walk through the grass, with a few beaters,
listening for the cry of the bird and following it ; in this
way the bird can be tracked for a considerable distance.
Before very long the bird will be seen jumping up above the
long grass, as some think to pick grasshoppers off the stems. The
best way then is to run as hard as possible up to the place
when the bird will rise. They drop very easily to shot, but when
once flushed are difficult to flush again.