898 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL RIST. SOCIUTY, Vol. XXVI- 



this elevation, but presently a richly-coloured brown bird 

 made its way into the open space. This bird, I saw at a 

 glance, was no hen Kalij, for even at the distance it then was, 

 I could see, without vising my glasses, that the feathers were 

 marked with broad striae or bands of colour darker than the 

 rest. I had, however, never seen a hen Tragopan, and could 

 not recognise what it was until she was followed by her mate, 

 and a magnificent male specimen of Blyth's Tragopan, re- 

 splendent in his crimson glor}^, burst upon nvj view. 



•' For a few minutes the two birds, male and female, 

 scratched about the hillside just like a pair of barn-door fowls, 

 now and then picking up an insect disturbed from under the 

 pebbles, or seizing a grasshopper from the scraps of herbage 

 scattered about over the bare ground. But presently, ceasing 

 to take any interest in the abundant food all about him, the 

 cock bird began to attempt to attract the attention of the hen 

 by all sorts of antics and displays. At first he merely came 

 up to her and bowed and scraped with his wings slightly 

 raised, and his purple-blue horns fully dilated and projecting 

 forward. Then seeing that she took no notice, he depressed 

 his wings and walked slowly round her, nodding violently 

 as he walked, and swelling out his throat and breast, the feathers 

 of which were ruffled and standing almost on end. After a 

 short time of this ineffectual display, he once more stopped in 

 front of the hen, and standing still, leaned forward until his 

 breast almost, or quite, touched the ground ; he then extended 

 both his wings, so that their upper portions faced the same 

 way as his head, and stood thu.s for some seconds — a blaze of 

 deep crimson, with his weirdly shaped horns quivering with 

 excitement, and his wattle displayed to the fullest possible 

 extent. Then suddenly his feathers collapsed, his horns nearly 

 disappeared ; he held himself ei-ect, and once more quietly 

 commenced to scratch and feed, until he and his mate shortly 

 disappeared into the adjoining forest. 



" As far as I could see, the hen bird took little or no 

 interest in the display of the male, and continued sei-enely 

 feeding all the time it was going on, but this was perhaps only 

 a lady-like way of inducing him to exert himself to the utter- 

 most. Both birds constantly uttered a soft, chuckling note, 

 and now and then the cock bird gave a loud qumvk. 



" I have had a great many of these birds in confinement, 

 and found them — once they had settled down — very easy to 

 keep. They were almost omnivorous in their diet, and would 

 eat any sort of grain, many kinds of green food, and any 

 insects, small reptiles, etc., which I could procure for them. 

 The males were rather quarrelsome, more especially during 



