208 INDIAN SPOETING BIEDS 



which are marked with large oval scarlet spots. The horns 

 should be also displayed at this time, but I hardly saw them when 

 I witnessed the display myself. This is a frontal display, but 

 the hen never seems to be anywhere where she is wanted at the 

 time. There appears to be usually but one hen with a cock, and 

 he seems more gentle with her than typical pheasants. Her 

 alarm note is much like the quack of a duck ; the cock is usually 

 silent, but in the pairing season calls with a bleat like a young 

 lamb, and also, but for only two or three days in each season, 

 according to Mr. Barnby Smitb, who has carefully studied this 

 species in confinement, gives out a weird, far-reaching, moaning 

 call like oo-ah, oo-ah, apparently as a challenge. Cocks can be 

 called up by imitating them, but are even then very wary and 

 hard to shoot ; in fact, it is very difficult to get a sight of 

 tragopans at any time, and the peculiarities of their display 

 have been made out from captive birds. As a general rule, 

 unless they can be hustled out of the ringal cover by dogs and 

 made to rise, they afford very little sport, for when seen in the 

 open, as they rarely are, they break away on foot if possible and 

 give only a snap-shot. They are often not better eating than 

 ordinary fowls, so that on the whole, though most fascinating 

 to the naturalist, they do not figure prominently on the game 

 list. 



Tcmminck's Tragopan. 



Tragopan temmincki. Oiia-oua-ky, Chinese. 



Temminck's tragopan, as may be judged from its alternative 

 name of Chinese crimson tragopan, is a bird whose most con- 

 spicuous colour is red, as in our eastern Indian species ; but the 

 Chinese bird is a perfectly distinct species, not a mere local race, 

 although the two are undoubtedly far nearer to each other than 

 either is to any of the few other tragopans known. 



The characteristic points of the Chinese bird are, first, the 

 bareness of the face, which permits the bright blue colour of 

 the skin to appear, and makes the bird in life conspicuously 

 different from the Indian bird with its black-feathered counten- 

 ance ; and secondly, the fact that the plumage is spotted, not 



