kinds, almost to the exclusion of animal food, is as fat, tender,
and well tasted a bird as can be found, and when properly cooked
well merits any praises that our forefathers, who chiefly saw
grain-fed birds, may have bestowed on them.
All depends upon the locality and food. In parts of the
country where no large rivers offer them pure air and water, and
where, when not feeding elsewhere, they haunt the marshes and
morasses, they are never, even though fat, very good, but where
these advantages are available, and (as in so many parts of the
Doab during the three first months of the year) the fat of the
land is theirs to revel in at will, they emerge superior to the common
run of comestibles, and furnish, unless betrayed by the malevolent
stupidity of the ordinary native cook, a truly royal dish.
Here, in India, the Crane, undoubtedly prefers grain of all
kinds—wheat, gram, rice and pulses, together with tender young
shoots of all these, while they are yet young—to all other food.
Perhaps of all things they most love the young pods of an
arborescent pulse, the Urhur or Dal as it is often called, (Cajanus
indicus,) and in the low alluvial lands of our larger rivers in which
this grows into miniature trees, six and seven feet (or even more)
in height, you may at times, after watching a flock settle, push
your way through the scented golden-blossomed thicket, and
enjoy the luxury of knocking over a brace right and left as they
rise, flustering noisily and clumsily out of the heavy cover. Not
only do they eat the young pods at such times, but also quantities
of the yellow pea-like flowers, and at other times, too, flower buds
seem not to come amiss to them, and Jerdon mentions one he
examined that had fed exclusively on the buds of the safflower.
Vegetables also attract them, and in China Swinhoe says that
they feed chiefly at one time on the so-called sweet potato,
which I need hardly say is no more a potato than a horsechestnut
is either a horse or a chestnut. But the strangest article
of diet for birds of this kind is the one in which they so
greedily indulge in parts of the Punjab. As children, we read
with mingled incredulity and wonder the fable of the fox and
the grapes, and it is not until we have travelled far east that we
begin to realize that foxes and jackals are really passionately
fond of grapes, and I can well fancy European friends who have
known Cranes only in their northern homes receiving, with similar
feelings, the statement that these huge waders are devoted
to Watermelon* ! But such is the case; in the sandy plains of
Ferozpore, Sirsa, Hissar and other parts of the Punjab, the
husbandmen when sowing the giant and bulrush millets,
sow watermelons largely, and when the millets have been
reaped, the otherwise bare stubbles resemble some deserted
battle field, thickly strewed with balls of all sizes from a 3-pounder
(represented by countless wild colocynth fruits) up to a
13-inch shell. The watermelons grow by millions; there
is no sale for them ; any passer-by may pluck and eat unchallenged,
provided only he spares the particular fruits that the
owner has shaded from the sun for greater enjoyment during
the noontide glare. On these descend the Cranes. When first
I noticed a field where they had fed, it seemed as though some
malevolent Mrs. Gamp had patrolled the place, viciously digging
the point of her huge umbrella two or three times into
each melon. The people told me that the offenders were Cranes,
but with truly national contempt for facts, not verified by one's
self, I disbelieved the fact. Later, however, I repeatedly
watched them in the act, and from their mode of lifting their
heads when at work, and from the examination of scores of
injured fruit, I came to the conclusion that, though they did eat
small portions of the interior part of the fruit, and some of the
seeds, they attacked the melons chiefly for drinking purposes,
water being in most cases far distant.
I myself believe the Common Crane to be by preference,
mainly a vegetarian; but at all times a small admixture of
animal food may be traced in the stomachs of some birds, and
when their favourite food is scarce, they eat water-crickets and
other insects, slugs and worms, small shells, both land and water,
and I have found the remains of small fish occasionally in their
gizzards. Of course these latter contain, like those of all such
birds, quantities of small pebbles, mostly quartz, some as large
as peas, a few at times even larger.
At night they prefer to roost—if I may use the expression
of birds so persistently noisy during hours of darkness that
none but very old and deaf individuals can possibly sleep a
wink—on some sandbank entirely surrounded by a good breadth
of water ; whether as a protection against nocturnal beasts, or
why, I cannot say.
Dr. Jerdon tells us that this species is sometimes hawked
with Peregrines, and gives a fine chase. I have seen it tried on
more than one occasion without success. Once from a high
perpendicular cliff of the Jumna we flew one at a flock, immediately
below us, that rose as we appeared on the edge of
the cliff. This was, I suppose, about 100 feet high, and the
Cranes may have been 200 from the base of the cliff. The
Falcon went down into the flock with one swoop. How it happened
it was impossible to see, but the Cranes flew off uninjured,
and the Peregrine floated, breast upwards and stone dead, down
the river. When recovered, both wings were broken, the head
was smashed in, and the back and backbone were completely
broken in. On other occasions, when flown from below, I have
seen Peregrines and Shaheens, either refuse the chase, or after
vigorous efforts fail to get above the Cranes. But I have seen a
pair of Bonelli's Eagles come down on a solitary, winged Crane,
on a sandbank, and kill it at the first swoop, and try hard, but
without success, to carry it off as the boatmen approached.