Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/175

Rh its soft call-note, and is answered from different directions, and the covey is soon united again. They live habitually in bushes and hedges, but come out into the open to feed early in the morning and again in the evening, moving softly with no visible feet. You may watch them if you keep very still, and it is a pretty sight. Seen at close quarters the Bush Quail is rather a handsome bird, with fat cheeks and a round good-natured face. Though the general colour is rather a dull brown, each feather is prettily freckled with black and buff. The male is much darker above than the female, but his under parts are white, banded with black, and his chin and throat are bright chestnut. Nobody shoots the Bush Quail, which is not worth much for the table; but it is snared by natives, and you will often find them for sale in the Crawford Market. It lays six or seven pale creamy eggs, about the end of the rains, under a bush or tuft of grass.

There is another group of small game birds known as Bustard Quails, or Button Quails, which has cost the classificators (this word is not in the dictionary, but cannot dispense with it) no small perplexity. They mostly want the hind toe (the birds I mean, not the classiricators) and have other peculiarities, on account of which they are given a whole Order to themselves in "The Fauna of British India." Jerdon puts them at the end of the game birds as a Family. They are quiet, shy birds, that live solitary lives in fields and scrub jungle, creeping about among the grass and feeding on seeds and insects. If you chance to tread on one's toes it will start out of the grass and fly swiftly for a few yards and drop again. And this is