While never attaining the size of wild birds, yet bustards thrive well in captivity--always assuming that they have been caught young. Old birds brought home wounded never survive twenty-four hours, dying not from the wound (which may be insignificant) but from _barinchin_, which may be translated chagrin or a broken heart. Young bustards reared thus become extremely tame, coming to call and feeding from the hand, though when old the males are apt to grow vicious in spring, attacking savagely children, dogs, and even women, especially those whom they see to be afraid.[47] Tame as they are, they are always subject to strange alarms, seemingly causeless. Suddenly they raise their wings, draw in their heads, and dance around, jumping in air, and ever intently regarding the heavens--sometimes dashing off under cover of bushes. One may connect this exhibition with some speck in the sky, some passing eagle, more often no motive is discernible. Bustard-chicks emit a plaintive whistle so precisely similar to that of the kites that (when hatched out under a domestic hen) the foster-mother has been so terrified as to desert her brood. When adult, bustards are usually quite silent, save for a grunting noise in spring--that is, in captivity. But on a hot day we have heard the old males, when passing on a drive, utter panting sounds, and (as already mentioned) a winged _barbon_ will turn to attack with a sort of gruff bark--wuff, wuff--as his captor approaches. So retentive is their memory that each year as May comes round our tame bustards keep constantly on the look-out for the first cart-load of green cut grass brought into the stable-yard for the horses. They even follow it right into the loose-box where it is stored, in order to feast on the grasshoppers it conceals, climbing all over the mountain of grass, but never scratching as hens or pheasants would do. THE LITTLE BUSTARD (_OTIS TETRAX_--SPANISH, _SISÓN_) The little bustard may fairly claim the proud distinction that it alone of all the game-birds on earth can utterly scorn and set at naught every artifice of the fowler--modern methods and up-to-date appliances all included. Here in Spain, though the bird itself is abundant enough (and its flesh delicate and delicious), it so entirely defies every set system of pursuit that no one nowadays attempts its capture. Practically none are killed save merely by some chance or accidental encounter.