Quail to be here. Bird-catchers then bring them into the
market literally in myriads, and sell them at from Rs. 1-8 to 2-0
per hundred. Like the males of the Common Quail, those of
this species are greatly prized for fighting, being just as pugnacious.
They arc generally taken in nets, in the same way as
the Common Quail."
Indeed, all over the country they are caught in just the same
manner as the Grey Quail, and, conspicuously different as the
great black patch on the breast renders the male, the two species
are commonly confounded even by some of those who make
their capture a profession.
Rain Quail afford just as pretty shooting as the Common
Quail when they arc numerous ; indeed, as they run less and fly
rather faster, they yield perhaps better sport ; but I have never
known it possible to make such huge bags of these as one can
of the other. In Upper India, during the winter and spring, you
are pretty sure to pick up a brace or two along with the Grey
Quail (with which they seem to associate on friendly terms) when
shooting this latter ; but I never knew more than five brace killed
at this season in a day by one gun. But just when they first
appear in the Doab in June or July, according as the rains are
early or late, you may manage by hard work to get from twenty
to thirty brace in a day if you have steady dogs and there is
plenty of grass about from two to three feet in height, or if, as
is the case in some districts, there are a good many fields of the
dwarf early rain millets.
Colonel Sykes asserts (Tr. Z. S., II,, 15) that the flesh of this
species is brown, that of the Common Quail being of course
white. Many as I have eaten, I am ashamed to say that I
have never noticed whether this is or is not a fact, though I distinctly
remember that they were never so fat and never such
good eating as the Common Quail.
THERE IS no doubt, I think, that the Rain Quail is monogamous.
From April they are always found in pairs, and both
birds may always be flushed near a nest ; and whilst the hen is
sitting, the male is perpetually calling to her.
More birds, I believe, breed in the Deccan, Guzerat and Central
India, and parts of the Central Provinces than elsewhere in India ;
but though comparatively thinly scattered about the country
after their first arrival, they do breed in suitable localities throughout
those provinces to which I have already indicated that they
are monsoon visitants. But as breeding haunts they always
select tracts abounding in grass, by preference grass of the finer
kinds that only grows to the height of two or three feet, and
more especially grass dotted about with thorny shrubs. In the
highly cultivated alluvial plains of the Doab and parts of Behar,
Oudh, and the North-Western Provinces, few remain to breed ; the
great majority, after a few days' halt, passing on northwards to
more congenial localities in the drier portions of the Terais and
Duns and the lower ranges of the Himalayas.
In Nepal they lay early in June ; in the Dun and the Kangra
Valley, in the only two instances of which I have a record, at
quite the close of that month; in various localities in Northern
Behar, the North-Western Provinces, Oudh and the Punjab in all
July ; in Sind, Guzerat, Central India, and the Deccan in August
and September ; and in the latter, at any rate in some years, until
late in November.
The nest is always on the ground, almost invariably in the
midst of standing crops or of moderately thin and moderately
high grass—a small depression in the soil, at times natural,
more often scratched by the birds, usually thinly lined with grass,
sometimes quite bare, and occasionally containing a regularly
made, though scanty, circular grass nest.
Nine appears to be the full complement of the eggs, though
as few as four are occasionally found more or less incubated,
and the bird clearly does not commence sitting until she has
laid the whole clutch. Sometimes apparently two hens lay in
the same nest.
From Sholapur, Mr. Wenden writes ;—" It was on the 28th
July this year that I received my first warning that it was time
to discontinue shooting these birds. On that day many of those
we shot had well-developed eggs in them. For a week or so
before this, the bird had been calling vigorously, evident signs
of pairing.
" On the 4th August I found and took a nest with four eggs.
On the 7th „ „ „ one with six and another with the
same number.
On the 12th „ „ „ one with five.
On the 14th „ ,, „ one with six, hard-set.
On the 25th September „ „ one with nine, showing signs of
incubation.
" On the 9th of August I found a single egg, not in, but close
by, the nest from which I took six eggs on the 7th, and it
struck me that the bird may have been about to lay it when I
flushed her from the nest (on the 7th) and dropped it as she
rose, or, on returning and finding her eggs gone, had deposited
it where found. All the eggs I found were deposited in hollows
in the ground (some of them like the imprint of a cow's foot,
others so slight as to be almost unobservable), without any
lining whatever. The only case in which I noticed any pretence
to a nest was on the 12th August, when I found five eggs in a
cucumber field. The bird had scraped a hole in a mass of
decayed leaves. I noticed many nests besides those which I
took ; they were all of the same type, most of them in Jowari
or Bajri fields ; some few in grass,—most of them close under
the plants or a bush, some of them in the bare open.