50 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



trail brought me downward toward a dense growth of ringal bamboo, whence the way 

 led over a narrow saddle, the sides dropping steeply on either hand. Hardly had I 

 stepped into the cloud level when I was startled by a sudden, deep whirr of wings at 

 my very feet— the loud, reverberating roll of strongly beating pinions. A second of 

 silence and there burst from out of the fog, fifty feet away, a splendid bird, glowing, as it 

 veered sideways, with richest carmine and besprinkled with a myriad white stars as of 

 shining dewdrops. I gazed in rapt admiration at the great cock Tragopan, as on set 

 wings it scaled swiftly away in a long, graceful curve, which at last immersed it again in 

 the billowy waves of blue-grey vapour. 



For days I had been studying this wary bird, but never had I been so struck with 

 its glorious beauty as when, like the flying fishes in the far distant ocean, it had so 

 unexpectedly burst for a moment through the surface of cloud into the clear upper air. 



A few minutes after the Tragopan had vanished, the forces of the mountains began 

 to make themselves felt. A rushing wind came down from the face of the snows, and 

 by some physical alchemy the cloud siphoned across the low saddle of the ridge. In 

 seething cascades of vapour it poured from one valley into the other — cold, steamy, 

 drenching, like the exhaust from some hidden titanic engine. I could hardly breathe, 

 and was relieved to climb out of the river of steam again into the sunshine of the 

 heights. 



A white-browed bush-robin began its simple, sweet phrases, and the buzz of a wild 

 bee announced the beginning of a new day's toil for the lesser mountain-folk. Then a 

 long-drawn-out wail, a voice apparently of lost hope, came from far down in the cloud- 

 ridden valley. It was the mating call of some wandering, furry cat-bear — or else the 

 challenge of a Satyr Tragopan — indistinguishable at this distance to our coarse hearing. 



GENERAL DISTRIBUTION 



The Satyr Tragopan is confined to the higher wooded mountains of the central and 

 eastern Himalayas. Its life-zone extends from a height of twelve thousand feet down 

 to seven and six thousand, but either extreme is reached but seldom. 



The Satyr Tragopan may be given third place in an altitudinal classification of 

 Himalayan pheasants. It does not, as a rule, ascend as high as the monil, and only 

 occasionally enters the zone of the blood partridge. 



In dense forests of eight to ten thousand feet elevation this splendid bird may be 

 found from Kumaon eastward through Nepal and Sikhim, and in Bhutan at least as 

 far as the Tongsa Chu. Its range in the west seems to end rather abruptly. Hume, 

 writing in 1872, gives the Alaknanda Valley as the last area inhabited by the Satyr 

 Tragopan, with a single male shot three valleys west, in the Kattar. I heard of two more 

 shot in the latter valley. Its north and south distribution is controlled by the limits 

 of suitable forests. It never descends to the hot plains, nor does it reach the Tibetan 

 tableland north of the hill forests. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



Compared with blood partridges, Tragopans are most solitary birds, and although 

 they wander about considerably, yet it is unlikely that they have any wide individual 



