Notices of Boohs. 9391 



whistle, which is often heard in the forest at daybreak or towards 

 evening, and occasionally at all hours of the day. In severe weather 

 numbers may be heard calling in different quarters of the wood before 

 they retire to roost. The call has a rather melancholy sound, or it 

 may be that, as the shades of a dreary winter's evening begin to close 

 on the snow-covered hills around, the cold and cheerless aspect of 

 nature, with which it seems quite in unison, makes it appear so. 

 From April to the commencement of the cold season, the monaul is 

 rather wild and shy, but this soon gives way to the all-taming influence 

 of winter's frosts and snows ; and from October it gradually becomes 

 less so, till it may be said to be quite the reverse ; but as it is often 

 found in places nearly free from underwood, and never attempts to 

 escape observation by concealing itself in the grass or bushes, it is 

 perhaps sooner alarmed, and at a greater distance than other phea- 

 sants, and may therefore appear at all times a little wild and timid. 

 In spring it often rises a long way in front, and it is difficult to get 

 near it when it again alights, if it does not at once fly too far to fol- 

 low ; but in winter it may often be approached within gunshot on the 

 ground, ^and when flushed it generally alights on a tree at no great 

 distance, and you may then walk quite close to it before it again takes 

 wing. In the forest, when alarmed, it generally rises at once without 

 calling or running far on the ground ; but on the open glades or grassy 

 slopes, or any place to which it comes only to feed, it will, if not hard 

 pressed, run or walk slowly away in preference to getting up ; and a 

 distant bird, when alarmed by the rising of others, will occasionally 

 begin and continue calling for some time while on the ground. It gets 

 up with a loud fluttering and a rapid succession of shrill screeching 

 whistles, often continued till it alights, when it occasionally com- 

 mences its ordinary loud and plaintive call, and continues it for some 

 time. In winter, when one or two birds have been flushed, all within 

 hearing soon get alarmed ; if they are collected together, they get up 

 in rapid succession ; if distantly scattered, bird after bird slowly gets 

 up, the shrill call of each, as it rises, alarming others still further off, 

 till all in the immediate neighbourhood have risen. In the chesnut 

 forests, where they are often collected in numerous bodies, where there 

 is little underwood, and the trees, thinly dispersed and entirely stripped 

 of their leaves, allow of an extensive view through the wood, I have 

 often stood till twenty or thirty have got up and alighted on the sur- 

 rounding trees, then walked up to the different trees, and fired at those 

 I wished to procure, without alarming them, only those close being 

 disturbed at each report. In spring they are more independent of 



