Description
From Frank Finn's The Game Birds of India & Asia (1911):
This species is easily distinguished from most of our partridges by its large size and comparatively long legs; as in the last species, the sexes are alike in plumage, but the cock is easily distinguishable by his spurs. The upper plumage is brown barred with buff, and the outer tail-feathers chestnut, as in the Grey Partridge; but the throat is bright rust-red, and the rest of the under-parts brown longitudinally streaked with white. The bill is blackish, the eyes dark, and the feet dull red. The cock of this species, which is a little larger than the hen, will measure fifteen inches, though his tail is only a little over four; the wing is more than seven inches, and the shank two-and-a-quarter. The Swamp Partridge, as its name implies, has a habitat quite different from our other species, affecting high grass and cane-brakes near the edges of rivers and jheels, though it will come into cultivated ground to feed. It haunts the alluvial plains of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, extending from Pilibhit to the extremity of Assam and Cachar, and even occurs occasionally on the Khasi plateau; but it is not found in the Sundarbans. Very little is known about its breeding, but on two occasions five eggs of the species have been taken in April; they were cream-coloured and slightly speckled. Owing to the localities which it frequents, the Swamp Partridge is usually shot from elephants; but Blanford states that he has shot it on foot near Colgong, in grass only three or four feet high. He says it much resembles the common Grey Partridge in its edible qualities, as it also does in its call ; and it is equally pugnacious. Mr. Hume, in the "Game-birds of India," falls foul of his artist for representing this species standing in water like a wading-bird. No doubt the draughtsman represented it thus in ignorance, but it would be interesting to know if this, one of the very few swamp-haunting birds in the pheasant family, ever does voluntarily go into water in the wild state. The keeper of the aviary in which a specimen of this species was confined in the London Zoo told me that he had seen it standing in water.
Read more about this topic: Swamp Francolin
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)