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ii8 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



heard the call note uttered by males when feeding in a loose flock in early spring, nor 

 even when separating to roost for the night, but it is the common family signal used 

 by the female and her young. The call of the latter, both males and females, even 

 when in full first winter plumage, is appreciably shriller and higher than that of their 

 mother, and when parent and offspring are calling alternately, it is always possible to 

 distinguish between them. I have verified this more than once in the case of captive 

 birds. The call note may be described as a high, reverberating whistle, bringing to 

 mind the beat of a dove's wings in flight. 



The hen Impeyan makes use of the call when anxious about her nest, or when 

 separated from the chicks, and although I could never distinguish the slightest difference 

 between the alarm note which was uttered while I was considered a dangerous intruder 

 with the young somewhere near by, and the ultimate call notes, in which the young 

 joined, as the family came gradually together again, there must have been some deep 

 and important distinction clearly obvious to the young birds. 



An Impeyan is feeding busily, flicking the dirt and leaves with strong picks of his 

 great beak, when some sound near by, not made by the wind, reaches his sharp ears. 

 He stiffens, stands upright and listens intently. The sound is repeated, but so muffled 

 and subdued that he cannot tell from which direction it comes. But his deepest 

 suspicions are not aroused, and he voices his nervousness in a deep cluk ! cluk I much 

 like the suspicion or alarm note of the American robin. This utterance is very unlike 

 the other notes of the Impeyan, and is called forth under exactly such circumstances as 

 I have narrated. I have heard it from both wild and captive birds. 



When, however, a cock Impeyan is suddenly alarmed, so that it leaps into the 

 air and whirrs away, it pours forth from wide-open beak a rapid succession of shrill, 

 screeching, whistling notes which can be heard at a surprisingly great distance. These 

 can be considered only as multiplied, intensified, terror-induced modifications of the 

 common call note : weeeep ! weeeep I weeeep I weeeeeep I 



I was once hidden among the lower branches of an oak with my glasses fixed upon 

 a distant cheer pheasant when I heard the sudden outburst of notes of fear. So full of 

 potent agony were they, that I remember I started and thrilled with sudden sympathy. 

 When one spends weeks and months of constant watching and concentrated interest, 

 striving to fit together the glimpses of pheasants or some fortunate hour of observation 

 into its proper place in their life histories, one comes unconsciously to view one's 

 surroundings somewhat through the eyes of these splendid birds. When I found that 

 the very best way to watch them was from a perch in a tree, or as I spent hour after 

 hour of cramped agony in my tiny observation tent, I felt that the mortification of the 

 flesh was perhaps compensated by the pheasant's-eye view of life I obtained while in such 

 situations ; in the first, I saw what the roosting pheasant sees, in the second instance 

 I was compelled to exercise some of the patience which the tireless mother bird exhibits 

 when giving up a full month of life to warm her eggs into dynamic vitality. And thus 

 when the sudden cry, drawn from the bird unconsciously, through sheer terror, came to 

 me, I too shuddered and breathed the quicker. My pulses did not lessen as I saw the 

 bird itself coming full tilt toward me diagonally across a narrow gorge. Head on it 

 came, wings bowed and vibrating, but with now and then a downward flirt of one wing 

 as it ducked beneath a branch or swerved around a trunk. From the first glimpse of it 



