fields. This may probably be owing to their comparatively
fewer numbers, as I have observed that many others of the
feathered race are much shyer and more suspicious of man
when rare, than those of the same species in places where more
numerous. Their call is a kind of chuckling, often continued
for sometime, and by a great many birds at once. It is uttered
indiscriminately at various intervals of the day, but most
generally towards evening.
" The Chukor feeds on grain, roots, seeds, and berries : when
caught young it soon becomes tame, and will associate readily
with domestic poultry.
" From the beginning of October, Chukor-shooting, from the
frequency and variety of the shots, and the small amount of
fatigue * attending it, is, to one partial to such sport, perhaps
the most pleasant of any thing of the kind in the hills. About
some of the higher villages, ten or a dozen brace may be bagged
in a few hours. Dogs may be used or not, at the discretion
of the sportsman ; they are not at all necessary, and
if at all wild, are more in the way than otherwise."
Dr. Scully remarks :—
" The Chukor is common in certain parts of the hills round
the valley of Nepal, at elevations of from 5,000 to 6,000 feet,
from March to October. It frequents rounded grassy hills,
where the small nallas are fringed with bushes, and where there
is no forest. In such localities, especially near patches of cultivation,
and on bits of stony ground, flocks of Chukor are sure
to be found. About the end of October the birds descend the
hills, and assemble on the confines of the warmer valleys for
the winter, where they can feed in the rice fields which have
been reaped, in fields of growing corn, &c."
They are very pugnacious birds, and in the spring I have
repeatedly come across pairs of cocks fighting desperately and
quite oblivious of everything else. I do not know that they
are ever kept in India for fighting, but Dr. Scully says :—
" Chukor seem to abound in all the hills which surround the
plains of Kashgharia on the north, west and south. In the
winter the birds seem to come down to lower elevations than
they frequent in summer ; numbers are then caught and brought
into Yarkand and Kashghar for sale.
" This species is rather prized by the Yarkandis on account
of its fighting propensities. I have seen some battles between
Chukor which I kept—not for fighting I need scarcely say—
the birds appearing to be decidedly pugnacious."
On this same subject Dresser remarks :—
" Like the Greek Partridge, it is extremely pugnacious and
quarrelsome, especially in the spring of the year ; and it is
* Mr. Wilson perhaps forgot that everybody cannot walk 30 miles in a day over
the worst giound, and come in as fresh as a lark, as he could. As a rule, if you want
to make ai'iWbag, ten to twenty brace of Chukor, it is very hard work.—A. O, 11.
said to have been kept tame for fighting in former ages, as
game-cocks were, not so long ago, in England. Naumann says
that the inhabitants of Cyprus still (when he wrote) kept them
for this purpose ; and he remarks that history relates that the
Roman Emperor, Alexander Severus, was extremely fond of
this sport. The present species is very easily tamed ; and, according
to Turnefort, the inhabitants of Scio and other islands
of the Greek Archipelago keep tame Chukor Partridges, which
they allow to seek food in the fields like poultry. Baron
König Warthausen gives the following extract from the journal
of Samuel Kiechel, who travelled through almost the whole
of Europe between 1585 and 1589 :—' In this island (Rhodes;
many Partridges are kept, some peasants having as many as
400 or 500, more or less. They breed, and are as tame as Geese.
In the morning a boy or girl drives them out into the fields,
and they fly away and search for food during the day. Towards
evening the child goes out in search of them ; and when they
hear the child's call, they fly towards him or her and are led
back to the house of their owner."
I have already noticed that birds once flushed lie well and
seem unwilling to rise again after a good flight. In our " Lahore
to Yarkand" Dr. Henderson noted that "in Yarkand the Chukor
swarms (wherever the rivers debouch into the plains) over a belt
of country some ten or fifteen miles in width. The Yarkandis
disdain the use of firearms for the chase of these birds. A party
of men mounted on ponies and armed with whips pursue a covey,
and in a very short time succeed in capturing the whole flock.
The Chukor will never rise more than twice, and after that, as they
run, they are easily overtaken and knocked over with whips. This
sport is carried on over the most terribly rough ground in the
rocky valleys ; but the Yarkand ponies traverse, at the top of their
speed, country that most men would only crawl over with the
utmost caution and deliberation."
Major O. St. John writes :—
" This is the Common Partridge of Persia, and I have shot it at
all elevations, from 10,000 feet in the Elburz to the base of the
hills near Bushire. The race found in the south is, I think, decidedly
larger than that of the Elburz. In the wild moorland
country which fringes the oak forests of Fäis, on the north, it is
especially abundant. I have killed twelve and a half brace before
breakfast in September near the Khän-i-Ziman caravanserai,
twenty-five miles west of Shiraz. Contrary to what is recorded
of its habits in the Himalayas, it avoids elevation in Persia."
T H E CHUKOR is in nowise migratory, though in some places
in the hills it may move a little higher and lower as the seasons
change. Wherever it occurs, there, as a rule, it breeds.
It breeds from sea level, as on the Mekran coast, up to an
elevation of 16,000 feet in Tibet. Mr. Wilson took and sent