File:Indian sporting birds (1915) (14563921410).jpg

Identifier: indiansportingbi00finn (find matches)
Title: Indian sporting birds
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Finn, Frank, 1868-1932 Hume, Allan Octavian, 1829-1912 Marshall, Charles Henry Tilson, 1841-
Subjects: Birds -- India Game and game-birds -- India
Publisher: London : Francis Edwards
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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with each note the bill is jerked furtherforward, while the wings are lifted and the piuion-quills droopedexposing their blackness, till, by the end of the song, the birdis calling with bill and neck erect, in the typical sarus position. This is a very wary bird, and when obtained is not goodeating, while it is not a devourer of crops, so that there is noparticular reason to trouble about shooting it. Its breeding-home is in Central Asia, Siberia, and Mongolia, and there itsfeeding habits are probably different from its vegetarianpractices in India, for in captivity in England it readily eatsfish, and will wait to catch them like a heron, and devour youngducks; it also digs for earth-worms. Eggs taken in the wild state are still a desideratum, butseveral pairs have laid and sat in captivity, though up to dateno young have ever been hatched. One pair in the LondonZoo nests in this futile way year after year; the eggs are twoin number, and olive-brown in colour with dark brown blotches.
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ANTHROPOIDES VIRGO. DEMOISELLE CEANE 129 Mr. R. Coso;rave, in some interesting notes on the cranes atLilford Hall in the AviciUtural Magazine, says that the whitecranes kept there are miserable in heat and rejoice in cold;and, though this is not the case with the Zoo birds, whichalways behave and look much the same, it is quite possible that,as he suggests, the climate accounts for the infertility of theeggs so far produced in England. Demoiselle Crane. Aiithropoides virgo. Karkarra, Hindustani. The demoiselle crane is the smallest species found, not onlyin India, but anywhere ; it is not quite a yard long, and sowould be more likely to be mistaken for the grey heron thanis the common crane, were it not that the adults have theirgrey plumage strikingly set off by the black face, neck andbreast, and long white plumes drooping from the cheeks;while in the case of the young, which have only black onthe neck, and but a little there, and the kiss-curls onlyjust indicated, the shorter beak

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