164 THE COCK OF THE PLAINS. 



the disproportionately small, convex, thin -quilled 

 wing, so thin, that a vacant space half as broad as 

 a quill appears between each, the flight may be said 

 to be a sort of fluttering, more than any thing else : 

 the bird giving two or three claps of the wings in 

 quick succession, at the same time hurriedly rising 

 then shooting or floating, swinging from side to side, 

 gradually falling, and thus producing a clapping, whir- 

 ring sound. When started the voice is cuck, cuck, 

 cuck, like the common pheasant. They pair in March 

 and April. Small eminences on the banks of streams 

 are the places usually selected for celebrating the 

 weddings, the time generally about sunrise. The 

 wings of the male are lowered, buzzing on the ground, 

 the tail spread like a fan, somewhat erect, the bare 

 yellow oesophagus inflated to a prodigious size, fully 

 half as large as his body, and, from its soft membra- 

 nous substance, being well contrasted with the scale- 

 like feathers below it on the breast, and the flexile 

 silky feathers on the neck, which on these occasions 

 stand erect. In this grotesque form he displays, in 

 the presence of his intended mate, a variety of atti- 

 tudes. His love-song is a confused grating, but not 

 offensively disagreeable tone something that we can 

 imitate, but have a difficulty of expressing Hurr- 

 hurr-hurr-r-r-r-hQOy ending in a deep hollow tone, 

 not unlike the sound produced by blowing into a largo 

 reed. Nest on the ground under the shade of Pur- 

 shia and Artemisia, or near streams, among Pha- 

 laris arundinacea, carefully constructed of dry grass 

 and slender twigs. Eggs from thirteen to seventeen, 



