OBSERVATIONS ON 



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, and 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 7 , the weight of a large full-grown cock phea- 

 sant, 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 \vere naked of feathers ; and 

 therefore it could be nothing of the grous kind. In the 

 tail were no long bending feathers, such as cock phea- 

 sants 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 curi- 

 ously 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 



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, flut- 

 tered, 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 

 farther 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. 



7 Hen pheasants usually weigh only two pounds ten ounces. 



