GREY PEACOCK PHEASANT 165 



detail in the fact that the wings, being also ornamented, are set 

 out on each side of the tail and enhance the effect, and are only 

 half opened, while the peacock keeps his wings behind his train 

 and even the true tail at the back, and shutiHes them with the 

 chestnut flight feathers showing. At the London Zoo it has 

 been observed that the male peacock-pheasant, when about to 

 display, allures the hen by offering her a bit of food and then 

 takes advantage of her proximity to show off, a very intelligent- 

 looking action. Like the tragopan, he has a sideway as well 

 as a frontal show, slanting himself, as it were, so as to show 

 all his spots on one side, and this was for long thought to be his 

 only pose. 



In time of courtship his hairy-looking crest, which is 

 always longer than the hen's and is chronically on end, turns 

 right forward over his beak, even when he is not otherwise 

 displaying. No doubt he fights with his rivals, and his legs are 

 often armed with several spurs apiece, but the number is very 

 variable, and some time ago I noted in three males at the Zoo, 

 all imported birds and several years old, that 'all differed in this 

 point, one indeed having no spurs at all and another only one. 



It looks, therefore, as if the idea current among the Kookies, 

 that a new spur grows every year, is incorrect, and that the 

 number of spurs is purely an individual point. The morning 

 and evening call of the cock, which begins with the year, and is 

 uttered at half-minute intervals, often for an hour or more at a 

 time, from a perch on a tree or stump, is described as " some- 

 thing like a laugh " ; it certainly is in several syllables, but the 

 laugh is a very harsh one, and I have noted it as a barking 

 cackle. It is deceptive as to distance, and yet furnishes the best 

 means of stalking the bird, which is not at all easy to get at by 

 any sportsmanlike means. It keeps closely to cover, especially 

 bamboos and low trees ; only if it can be forced to " tree " by 

 hunting it with noisy curs, it may provide a pot shot. Natives 

 often snare it, and Davison once had a very curious experience 

 in getting specimens in this way in Tenasserim, where he found 

 the bird very common. "I found," he says, as quoted by Hume, 

 " three holes of the porcupine rat (of which I got two specimens) 

 communicating with one another ; the entrance to one of these 



