12 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



white-throated laughing thrushes may fly up from the ground. They hiss and seeeep I 

 and at last pour forth their hysterical, irritating chorus of guffaws, until one gladly 

 hastens out of hearing. When a pair of these birds, nest-building, is encountered, they 

 utter not a sound as they fling themselves quickly out of sight. Another common 

 ground-feeder in these haunts of the Koklass is the great Himalayan grosbeak. The 

 males in gay yellow and black, the females in sombre grey, fly up from their feast of 

 conifer-seeds, and then from the tree-tops comes their loud, hollow che-che-ult ! 

 Through the forest aisles there flashes now and then the scarlet gleam of a male 

 minivet, and in a momentary cessation of his lofty fly-catching we hear his musical, 

 whistling trill. 



Until one sits down in the probable path of Koklass and waits patiently, one does 

 not notice the strong undertone of sound — the hum of a myriad flying things. It is 

 impossible at this season to find a spot at midday either in sunshine or shadow free 

 from insect pests. They search one's face and eyes with fiendish persistence. Little 

 yellow diptera are very bad biters and their punctures give trouble for days. Then 

 there is a tiny villain whose attack you do not notice until he is almost ready to depart, 

 when a sudden sharp shooting pain may make you flinch at a critical moment of 

 observation, perhaps alarming a pheasant whose approach you have long awaited. 

 There are no mosquitoes, and the mornings and late afternoons among the deodars are 

 perfect. 



When we have concealed ourselves amid the saxifrage and star-flowers and judged 

 our position well, we may be fortunate enough to see a pair of dark objects some 

 distance down the slope, through a vista of trunks. Resting the glasses in a chink of 

 branch and trunk and focussed on the pair of Koklass, we settle for a long period of 

 watching. Every movement shows how wary they are. Were we to raise but a finger 

 in air they would be off like shots. 



The cock scratches with one foot, and with a low chuckle calls his mate. They 

 feed busily for a few minutes and then a fir-cone falls with a thud near them. They 

 spring two feet into the air, but recover themselves instantly, so keen and quick is 

 their discrimination between real and seeming danger. Later a faint crash reaches our 

 ears and both birds stand at full height on tiptoe, their half-raised crest making them 

 the very personification of concentrated attention. Another and another crash and 

 swaying of branches announce the approach of a troop of langur monkeys, and as they 

 pass close on one side, the pheasants stand motionless until the last youngster has 

 swung himself from sight. Then the birds move slowly to one side and out of my line 

 of vision. 



Ordinarily the Koklass is shy and rather solitary, in the sense that it..is adverse to 

 gathering in large flocks even to feed like the impeyan. On the other hand, it is 

 pre-eminently monogamous, and the pairs remain together throughout the year, so that 

 there is no doubt but that the birds pair for life, which unfortunately in the majority 

 of cases means probably for only one or two years. 



In the cold season, when concentrated as I have described, numbers of old birds 

 may sometimes be flushed within a short distance of one another, but even here there 

 is obviously no true flock attraction, the birds going off in different directions and 

 seldom giving the flock call, which is so common an utterance with such' birds as blood 



