296



Mr. Frank Finn



KALEEGE AND OTHER PHEASANTS.


By Frank Finn, B.A., F.Z.S.


It is noticeable that while forms differing only in colour, even

when ranked by us as species, habitually interbreed freely where their

ranges overlap, species differing in structural characters only do

so sporadically. Thus, among our own birds, the Hooded and Carrion

Crows, where they meet in the breeding season, pair indiscriminately,

but the Capercailzie and Blackcock only produce hybrids here and

there.


There seems to be, however, a remarkable exception to this

among the Pheasants of the Kaleege group, where an unbroken chain

of forms, to all appearance due to interbreeding, exists between

the black Horsfield’s or Purple Kaleege (Gennceus horsfielcli ) and

the lovely Silver Pheasant ( G. nycthemerus ) of our aviaries. Yet

the nearest member of the group to this, the Lineated Kaleege (Gf.

lineatus), which shows a recognisable approach to the Silver Pheasant

in its coloration, being black below and pencilled above, differs from

it in several structural points ; its crest is narrow and expands

laterally, instead of being full and expanding only vertically ; its tail

is short and almost hen-like, and it is much smaller, only about half

the Silver Pheasant’s size.


I have noted another very important difference in the

Lineated Kaleeges bred at the Zoo. The Silver Pheasant is well

known not to get his full male plumage till the year following that

of his birth ; the Lineated bird gets his colour in his first autumn—

indeed, he is nearly in complete male colour long before he is full-

sized, so that he looks rather like a bantam edition of his sire. The

hen Lineated also is as fully crested as the male, while in the Silver

Pheasant the crest of the hen is so short as hardly to be noticeable.


Well-characterised species can exist side by side without

intermixing. A good case of this is seen in the Amherst and Golden

Pheasants, which do not become fused in the wild state, though in¬

habiting the same area, owing to the hostility of the Amherst to the

Golden, which it drives from its own favourite localities, according



