CABOT'S TRAGOPAN 



Tragopan caboti Gould 



Names. — Specific : caboti, for Dr. Cabot of Boston. English : Cabot's or Yellow-bellied Tragopan. German : 

 Gelbauchige Hornhuhn. Vernacular : T'u-shou-chi (Chinese, Hong-kong). 



Brief Description. — Male : Head and neck black, except for a pale orange-red crest and a darker patch 

 of the same colour on side of neck ; feathers of upper parts with a large terminal buff spot, flanked with red and 

 black ; under parts plain buff. Female : General tone, dark russet-brown above, brownish-grey below. Considering 

 the ground colour as black, the feathers are mottled and irregularly barred with pale rufous and buff, with a white 

 triangular or linear subterminal white spot, very conspicuous on lower plumage ; wing and tail feathers black, 

 banded with pale rufous mottling. 



Type. — China, purchased at Macao, near Hong-Kong. Now in the collection of the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, Harvard University. 



Range. — South-east China. 



GENERAL DISTRIBUTION 



When, far to the south, the rugged mountains of Yunnan have freed themselves 

 from the erosion of the numerous parallel rivers, they swing to the east, forming, south 

 of the Yangtze, a more or less unbroken range, the backbone of southern China. This 

 mountain range skirts the lowlands of the Lung and West Rivers, shunting the rains 

 to the north and to the south into the Laing, Yuen and North Rivers, and dying out 

 only when its outlying foot-hills are bathed by the waters of the Pacific. 



We know but little of this intervening country than that it forms a highway for 

 many creatures of the earth, along which many have slowly found their way from the 

 central Himalayan highlands. Among these is the splendid Cabot's Tragopan, notably 

 distinct from its fellows, which has made its home here, almost fifteen hundred miles 

 from the region where we found the satyr tragopan. How far to the west its range 

 extends we do not know. I have a bird shot by Leland Smyth in the extreme south of 

 Hunan {circa Lat. 26° N., Long. 112° E.), and a number of observers have found the 

 bird to be numerous in north-western Fokien, while I have observed it somewhat south 

 of that point. So we shall be generous in our estimate of its range if we demarcate 

 it roughly as a scalene triangle with the bases at 26° N., 110° E., and 26° N., 117° E., 

 and its apex at 28° N., 118° E. 



GENERAL HABITS 



The first mention of the Cabot Tragopan in a wild state is that of Abbe David, who 

 says that, in 1877, he found it very common on the mountain chain which separates 

 Fokien from Kiangsi. It was known to the natives by the same name as the Temminck 

 tragopan, and its flesh was equally good eating. As during the months of October and 

 November no males were observed in the plumage of the female, he believed that the 

 Cabot Tragopan presented the unique peculiarity of assuming a complete adult plumage 

 in the first year. 



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