Hubert D. Astley—Miscellanies



117



I regretted that no opportunity was given me when at the Lake of

Como to see a very interesting sight. 1 happened to visit the iron-

smith at Varenna this spring, where I saw a beautiful blue Rock Thrush

in a cage, to which I was at once attracted, when the “ fabbro ” said,

“ That is the same bird, signore, that you used to know.” 1 had not

seen it for seven years, and it is now nearly thirteen, showing no signs

of old age. Its owner then told me that across the lake, near Menaggio,

there is a man who has tw r o true pairs of this species, and that every

spring one of the females makes a nest in the cage, where a food-vessel

should be, lays her eggs, and last year hatched them, but that owing to

lack of time for procuring insect food on the part of their owner

the young did not survive. This is interesting. The cage is only

a roomy one of open wooden bars.



On my return home in the beginning of June I found four Monaul

chicks and one Satyr Tragopan—the little Tragopan most delightfully

tame, having as a mother a black Silky, and two Partridge Pekin

Bantams as foster-brothers. When I held a bowl with food the

Tragopan, running at liberty on a lawn, fearlessly stepped into it to

pick out the choicest morsels, and was more tame than the Bantams.

Its colour in the natal down : head rich rufous, upper parts dark rufous,

underparts yellowish-buff. I had left in April, when the male Tragopan

was daily displaying, an astonishing sight. One moment one sees a

beautiful Pheasant of rich Venetian red thickly spotted with white,

the next, if he is facing you, something out of a pantomime, some

heavenly demon, if such a being could be. Astonishing ! Emerald-

green horns erected, gular wattle covering the bird’s front, a wattle of

vivid brilliant turquoise and emerald-green, patched with rose, leaving

one holding one’s breath ! In some ornithological publications, whose

authors should have known better, male Tragopans represented in

coloured plates show the fleshy horns on the head ; which except

during the moment of display one scarcely ever sees, and then but the

mere tips ; and also the gular wattle lowered.


It is evident that merely skins of birds have been used by the

artist, for after death the horns and wattle collapse and hang down.



