Porzana bicolor, Walden.
Vernacular Names.—[ ? ]
T the close of 1870 I picked out a bird of this species
, from a collection that had been made in Sikhim
• by Captain H. J. Ehvcs. I felt sure that the bird was
undescribed, but had no books to consult, so deferred
describing it until I rejoined my head-quarters.
Uufortunately the box containing this and numerous
valuable skins from Assam was mislaid and
never turned up for years, when it was found amongst other
property in the Agra Customs House
In the meantime, I received a second specimen from Mr.
Mandelli, and at once described it, naming it after its discoverer,
Captain Elwcs. I sent the description to the Ibis, but the Editor,
instead of publishing it, put it aside for seven or eight months, and
only remembered it when Lord Walden, who in the meantime
had received a third specimen, described it under the name
" bico/or." Thus the name of the real discoverer was lost sight
of, and it is only in the trivial name that this can now be
preserved.
Little is as yet known of its distribution. Numerous specimens
have now been obtained in Sikhim, and again in the neighbourhood
of Shillong on the Khasi Hills, where Godwin-Austen was
the first to find it; but it has not been met with elsewhere, though
it will doubtless prove to extend in suitable localities throughout
the hills bounding the valley of Assam on the north and
south.
SMALL MARSHY pools and swamps and irrigated rice fields
(in Sikhim much of the rice is dry), at elevations of from four
to fully six thousand feet, are the situations in which all recorded
specimens have been found. They have all been killed during
the summer, and I should expect that during the cold season
this species either retreats to the Tarai, Duars, and similar places
in the valley of Assam, or that it moves further east.
Nothing is known of its habits, but the contents of the
stomach of one specimen are noticed as " insects, grain and gravel,"