204 INDIAN SPORTING BIRDS 



may reach over a yard, although the bird himself is barely as 

 big as a hen common pheasant. The frill and long centre tail- 

 feathers are both white marked with black, and are set off by 

 the narrow red crest, red border to the straw-yellow rump, and 

 red tips to the long tail-coverts ; the rest of the plumage is mostly 

 green, but white below the breast. When displaying, the cock 

 expands his tail and frill sideways, and always attracts attention 

 at the Zoo when thus showing off; in fact, many people must 

 know this bird by sight, although it is not yet, after many years' 

 breeding in captivity, anything like so well known as its only 

 near relative, the gold pheasant {Chrysoloplms pictus). 



The Amherst hen, though a plain-looking brown bird without 

 trimmings, is strikingly marked off from our other hen pheasants 

 by the bold cross barring of her upper plumage and neck ; she 

 has also chestnut eyebrows and a bare livid patch round the eye. 

 Yearling cocks may be distinguished by the whitish tint of their 

 napes and centre tail-feathers, and green gloss on the crown. 

 Like its ally, the gold pheasant, this is a Chinese bird, but ranges 

 to Tibet and reaches our territory also, though this has only 

 been known in recent years. In his " Manual of the Game Birds 

 of India," vol. ii, published in 1809, Gates mentions that he iiad 

 seen a skin of a bird of this species, a cock, which had been 

 shot, either in the Myitkyina or in the Bhamo district, on the 

 frontier between Burma and China, by one of the officers 

 engaged in the settlement of the frontier in question. Then, 

 in 1905, Mr. E. Comber recorded in the Journal of the Bombay 

 Natural History Society that the Society had " lately received 

 the skin of an adult male specimen in full plumage of Lady 

 Amherst's pheasant from Lieutenant W. W. Yon Someran, 

 who shot it at a height of about 9,000 feet near Sadon in the 

 Myitkyina district of Upper Burma." The donor had stated 

 about the habits of the birds that they lived at elevations of 

 8,000 feet or over, and he had never seen a bird below this ; 

 and that they appeared to be common over the frontier on the 

 hills of the Chinese side. 



The habits of the bird in China are thus described by 

 Pere David, " Lady Amherst's pheasant lives, the whole year 

 round, in the highest jungle-covered hills of Western Szechuen, 



