ii6 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



number of birds may delay their descent for a month or more by taking advantage of 

 the comparatively bare ground in the dark coverts of dense rhododendron scrub. 



Unusually severe winters drive the birds to seek food in the vicinity of the lofty 

 Nepalese and other native hamlets, where the birds may occasionally be seen digging in 

 the deserted fields. Impeyans probably suffer but little from snow and cold, for they 

 are hardy and seem able to withstand very low, protracted falls of temperature provided 

 they have an abundance of food. In their native haunts, instead of a journey of 

 hundreds of miles as in the case of latitudinal migrants, a single leap into the air and a 

 long, scaling flight often will carry them a full mile downward, where the snow has 

 turned to warm rain, and in place of the frozen, dead turf, is fresh sprouting vegetation 

 and abundant insect life. 



Impeyan Pheasants seem to a large extent gregarious, but the ties between the 

 members of a flock are extremely lax. In the autumn and winter considerable numbers 

 will be found in close association, but the sociability seems dependent more upon 

 available food than any innate covey instinct. This is shown by the irregular 

 distribution of the birds on any favourite slope. If the food, such as grubs and certain 

 edible tubers, is rather scarce and local, one may find from a dozen to thirty birds 

 all within the limits of a few rods, busily feeding, while with an abundant and more 

 generally distributed food supply, the birds will spend the colder months singly, at 

 considerable distances from their fellows. This being the case, it will readily be seen 

 that the same lot of birds working gradually down some great mountain slope, may 

 seem extremely gregarious at a certain elevation, and not at all elsewhere. Another 

 fact, aside from any actual covey instinct, which makes for the gathering of Impeyans 

 into loose flocks in the winter-time, is the constriction of the actual livable areas as the 

 upper regions are rendered uninhabitable by arctic conditions. 



It is certainly true, however, that there is a distinct segregation of the sexes. In 

 the autumn, the females, with their similarly coloured young of both sexes, wander 

 downward earlier, and ultimately reach a lower elevation than the full-plumaged cocks. 

 '' On the lower part or exposed side of the hill, scores of females and young birds may 

 be met with, without a single old male ; while higher up, or on the sheltered side, none 

 but males may be found." This more or less complete isolation of cocks and hens holds 

 good until spring. Continued persecution for many years, on the part of natives, of the 

 full-plumaged cocks for their feathers, has helped to bring about a slight or, in some 

 places, well-marked distinction in the sex of Impeyans observed near villages. While 

 this was recorded over sixty years ago, it is more true now than ever, and when 

 Impeyans are driven down by heavy snowfalls it is seldom that any but females or 

 young birds are ever to be seen in the fields within sight of the habitations 

 of man. 



No matter how loose are the ties between individual Impeyans, any hint of danger 

 affects all simultaneously. *' 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 farther off, till all in the immediate neighbourhood have 

 risen. In the chestnut forests, where they often collect in large flocks, and where there 

 is little underwood, and the trees, thinly dispersed and entirely stripped of their leaves. 



