THE BUSTARD QUAIL BUSTARD-Quails and Button Quails do not belong to the vast and varied family of partridges,

quails, spurfowls, jungle fowls, pheasants and peafowl, but only to the next family, but since they are so quaillike in size and appearance, may be noticed here. Like the much larger bustards, these little rounded birds have no hind toe: their feet have only the three forward pointing toes, a peculiarity by which they may be distinguished from quails at a glance. Apart from this, too, as a family they are notable for a life history which will delight the hearts of all militant feminists. In them, the female is larger and more showy in appearance than the male, and takes the dominant part in courtship: the female is polyandrous, and leaves the taxing duty in incubating the eggs and rearing the hatched young to successive males. The Indian Bustard-Quail, typical of its tribe, is a small, plump bird the size of a jungle bush quail, with a more pointed tail. Both the male and the slightly larger female are brown on top, mottled with buff and black; the chin and throat are pale, and the underside buff, banded on the breast with black in the male. In the female, which is richer in colour, there is a black longitudinal patch over the breast. In both sexes, the iris is white, giving the bird an angry-looking, or sometimes a furtive appearance. This bustard-quail has a wide range over the country, but is by no means common, for it does not congregate in numbers in any area as quails do. It favours grassland in the plains and lower hills. It sticks to ground cover and is not readily seen, but the females challenge to rival females often betrays its presence a long, reverberating call extending over nearly 20 seconds, remarkably like the sound made by a small motor cycle going uphill half-a-kilometre away. This call is evidently sounded as an assertion of territory, to warn rival females not to encroach into the area and, according to C. M. Inglis, is always sounded with the bird sitting down on its folded legs. As said, the female is polyandrous, establishes breeding territory and takes the active part in courtship. The four grey eggs, heavily blotched with brown, are laid in a scrape in the ground, usually well screened by bushes around. Once they are laid, the female abandons them and goes away to seek another mate. Successive mates are found in this way, but whether the female is promiscuous or sticks to the same partners is not known.