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On Tragopans in Captivity.



Later on a Teuuninck laid two eggs in another Pigeon’s

nest. These also failed to hatch in the incubator, being unfertile.


The third clutch of eggs, again two in number, were laid

by another Temminck’s Tragopan, on an artificial platform,

which we had fixed up in a yew tree, 8ft. from the ground.

Two young birds were hatched in the incubator, and one was

reared ; the other getting damaged by an accident and dying.

The survivor is doing well, and is evidently a male.


In the last three seasons I have now had six clutches of

eggs, laid by four different individual Tragopans (two Cabot’s and

two Temmiuck’s). In each case the eggs were laid in a Pigeon’s

nest, or on a platform resembling one, from 8ft. to 14ft. from the

ground. Each of these clutches contained only two eggs. It

certainly looks as if the habit of the Trogopans (at least of the

two species under notice) was to nest off the ground, and to lay

small clutches.


The flight feathers of the young Tragopan chick are

extraordinarily developed when it leaves the shell, and the bird

is very active and independent. Bearing this in mind it causes

no surprise to find that the egg is of unusual size, and it might

be difficult for the bird to find a tenantless nest capable of

containing a larger number of eggs. This practice of nesting in

a tree, coupled with the extraordinary activity of both the

juvenile and the adult in trees (I recorded, last year, how the

young Cabot Tragopans of a few days’ old flew from perch to

perch in the wire run of the foster-mother, like young Thrushes

or Robins), suggests the thought that in its native haunts the

Tragopan has to use its wits to escape from ground enemies of

some particularly destructive type. We find little recorded of

the breeding habits of the various Tragopans. They appear from

description to be excessively difficult to flush or even to see ;

and most of the examples, dead or alive, sent to Europe would

seem to be netted or snared by natives.



