Grey Francolin - in Culture

In Culture

The species has long been domesticated in areas of northern India and Pakistan where it is used for fighting. The domesticated birds can be large at around 500-600g, compared to 250g for wild birds. They are usually carefully reared by hand and become as tame and confiding as a pet dog.

Several authors have described the running of the birds as being particularly graceful:

They run very swiftly and gracefully; they seem to glide rather than run, and the native lover can pay no higher compliment to his mistress than to liken her gait to that of the Partridge. —A O Hume quoted in Ogilvie-Grant

John Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard Kipling's father, wrote of this and other partridges such as the Chukar Partridge:

The creature follows its master with a rapid and pretty gait that suggests a graceful girl tripping along with a full skirt well held up. The Indian lover can pay his sweetheart no higher compliment than to say she runs like a partridge. In poetry the semblance is one of best hackneyed of Indian metaphors. In poetry, too, the partridge is associated with the moon, and, like the lotus, is supposed to be perpetually longing for it, while the chikore is said to eat fire. —Kipling, 1904