BIRDS OF TENASSERIM. 427 



lower neck just the points of tbe blue are visible, and on the 

 breast the whole of the blue and green is more or less exhibited. 

 Just where the head joins the neck at the sides and in front the 

 feathers are deep violet blue, greener, however, in some lights, 

 tipped with green and some of them with bronze. The rest of 

 the bird is so far like the common Indian species that it seems- 

 needless to describe it. 



803 ter.— Argus giganteus, Tem. (20). 



Bankasoon. 



Confined to the densest forests in the neighbourhood of the 

 Pakchan. 



[This magnificent Pheasant is comparatively common in the 

 evergreen forests about Male vvoon and Bankasoon, and in the 

 forests about the higher portions of the Pakchan, and there I 

 enjoyed many opportunities of observing their habits, living, 

 as I did for months, surrounded by them, shooting, trapping, and 

 seeing them almost daily. 



They live quite solitarily, both males and females ; every male 

 has his own drawing room, of which he is excessively proud, 

 and which he keeps scrupulously clean. They haunt exclusive- 

 ly the depths of the evergreen forests, and each male chooses 

 some open level spot — sometimes down in a dark gloomy 

 ravine, entirely surrounded and shut in by dense cane brakes, 

 and rank vegetation — sometimes on the top of a hill when the 

 jungle is comparatively open — from which he clears all the dead 

 leaves and weeds, for a space of six or eight yards square 

 until nothing but the bare clean earth remains, and thereafter 

 he keeps this place scrupulously clean, removing carefully every 

 dead leaf or , twig that may happen to fall on it from the trees 

 above. 



These cleared spaces are undoubtedly used as dancing grounds, 

 but personally I have never seen a bird dancing in them, but 

 have always found the proprietor either seated quietly in or 

 moving backward and forwards slowly about them calling at 

 short intervals. Except in the morning and evening when they 

 roam about to feed and drink, the males are always to be 

 found at home, and they roost at night on some tree quite 

 close by. 



They are the most difficult birds I know of to approach ; a 

 male is heard calling, and you gradually follow up the sound, tak- 

 ing care not to make the slightest noise, till at last the bird calls 

 within a few yards of you, and is only hidden by the denseness 

 of the intervening foliage ; you creep forward hardly daring to 

 breathe, and suddenly emerge on the open space, but the space is 

 empty, the bird has either caught sight of or heard or smelt 



