HIMALAYAN IMPEYAN PHEASANT 119 



far off through the spruces to the moment it alighted below me, seemed but a fraction 

 of a second. Its alarm notes had died out long before it reached me, but the instant it 

 alighted it began a breathless, half-articulated call note, and for two or three minutes it 

 remained motionless, half crouched, with bill partly open, uttering at intervals its loud, 

 plaintive call. Then it walked slowly away, and I saw no more of it nor did I ever 

 learn the cause of its fright. This secondary utterance of the call notes seems to have 

 no distinct purpose. I was told that the same thing occurs when a cock bird is thus 

 suddenly alarmed in winter, when it can have no family or young to summon or warn. 

 It would seem to be a mere reflex of the sudden nervous strain, and the bird is probably 

 as unconscious of calling at such a time as is a person of his exclamations at a sudden 

 fright. 



The mother note of the Impeyan is low and subdued, a crooning, nasal, untrans- 

 latable sound, while the chicks have a whistling chirp that merges, with but little change 

 except of depth and volume, into the call of the adult Impeyans. 



The early morning calling is rather inexplicable. I have known of four birds, old 

 and young, roosting at a certain place night after night, and yet, early in the morning, 

 all four would regularly go through a period of repeated calling. The calling was less 

 noticeable and of shorter duration when the dawn was lowering and cloudy than when 

 the sun came over the mountains bright and clear. It seems probable that it can only 

 be a mere concomitant of the nervous excitement of awaking and preparing for another 

 day. When the birds begin to feed, the call notes cease at once, and during the day 

 they are seldom given, unless the birds are forcibly separated by attack or, as we have 

 seen, unexpectedly alarmed. 



The Impeyan appears at his best when standing still, although even then the 

 stoutness and thickness of his legs and feet give him a far from graceful figure. But, 

 however much we admire his marvellous colouring, of his gait we can say little of praise. 

 It seems to get him over the ground, and throughout his short life he doubtless covers 

 many, many miles of stiff hill climbing, but to our eyes his waddling, plodding gait 

 seems to savour of effort — something seeming decidedly wrong in the general proportions 

 of bodily weight or balance and the lower limbs. But we may be certain that there is 

 good cause for this, and I have sometimes wondered whether the gait of this bird, 

 awkward as it appears on level ground as in an aviary, was not some direct adaptation 

 for hillside clambering. The wide apart position of the legs would certainly be an 

 advantage in clambering over coarse, uneven turf, and in such locations there would be 

 little use for the swift, direct speed of other pheasants. The Impeyan apparently 

 has need in life of just such strong, sturdy legs to enable it to climb about all day. 



The food of Impeyan Pheasants is rather specialized, and yet varies considerably 

 during the course of the year. Many writers have given the impression that it feeds 

 to a large extent on some special form of large grub, and also on a particular edible 

 tuber, but none enter further into details than this, and it is very improbable that there 

 is any species of larval beetle or other insect which is so abundant and widespread 

 throughout the Himalayas as to form a very dominant item in the diet of this pheasant. 

 However, terrestrial insects and tubers do certainly form its chief food, but in every 

 locality in which I have studied Impeyans, these differ widely. Whenever snow does 

 not cover the ground, or the forest debris is unfrozen, Impeyans spend much of the day 



