A HYBRID PHEASANT. 267 



with her wings, and crying out as if wounded and unable to get 

 from us. While the dam acted this distress, the boy who at- 

 tended me saw her brood, that was small and unable to fly, run 

 for shelter into an old fox-earth under the bank. So wonderful 

 a power is instinct.* 



A HYBRID PHEASANT. 



LORD Stawell sent me from the great lodge in the Holt a 

 curious bird for my inspection. It was found by the spaniels of 

 one of his keepers in a coppice, and shot on the wing. The 

 shape, air, and habit of the bird, and the scarlet ring round the 

 eyes, agreed well with the appearance of a cock pheasant ; but 

 then the head and neck, and breast and belly were of a glossy 

 black : and though it weighed three pounds three ounces and a 

 half,f the weight of a large full-grown cock pheasant, yet there 

 were no signs of any spurs on the legs, as is usual with all grown 

 cock pheasants, who have long ones. The legs and feet were 

 naked of feathers, and therefore it could be nothing of the grouse 

 kind. In the tail were no long bending feathers, such as cock 

 pheasants usually have, and are characteristic of the sex. The 

 tail was much shorter than the tail of a hen pheasant, and blunt 

 and square at the end. The back, wing feathers, and tail, were 

 all of a pale russet, curiously streaked, somewhat like the upper 

 parts of a hen partridge. I returned it with my verdict, that it 

 was probably a spurious or hybrid hen bird, bred between a cock 

 pheasant and some domestic fowl. When I came to talk with 

 the keeper who brought it, he told me that some pea-hens had 

 been known last summer to haunt the coppices and coverts 

 where this mule was found. J 



* It is not uncommon to see an old partridge feign itself wounded and run along on the ground 

 fluttering and crying before either dog or man, to draw them away from its helpless unfledged 

 young ones. I have seen it often, and once in particular I saw a remarkable instance of the old 

 bird's solicitude to save its brood. As I was hunting a young pointer, the dog ran on a-brood of 

 very small partridges ; the old bird cried, fluttered, and ran tumbling along just before the dog's 

 nose till she had drawn him to a considerable distance, when she took wing and flew still further 

 off, but not out of the field : on this the dog returned to me, near which place the young ones lay 

 concealed in the grass, which the old bird no sooner perceived than she flew back again to us, 

 settled just before the dog's nose again, and by rolling and tumbling about drew off his attention 

 from her young, and thus preserved her brood a second time. I have also seen, when a kite has 

 been hovering over a covey of young partridges, the old birds fly up at the bird of prey, screaming 

 and fighting with all their might to preserve their brood. MARKWICK. 



t Hen pheasants usually weigh only two pounds ten ounces. 



t There cannot be the slightest doubt as to the origin of this hybrid bird, which was a mule 

 between the male pheasant and the female black grouse, differing, however, from most hybrids so 

 produced in the tarse being entirely devoid of feathers. The only mixed progeny of the pheasant 



