6o A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



Neither did I observe that the birds ceased wholly to feed in the middle of 

 the day, although many of the days which I spent in this region were partly or wholly 

 cloudy, and this may have had something to do with the more or less uninterrupted 

 diurnal activity of the pheasants. When the sun shone with unusual vigour, I have 

 seen a hen Cheer go to a bit of old dug-over ground and give herself up to the 

 pleasure of a thorough dust-bath, working sideways, downward and scooping the dust 

 over her body with one wing, exactly as a barn-yard fowl would do. She never 

 however, relaxed her vigilance for a moment, and even when apparently wholly 

 absorbed in her wriggling and spasmodic stirring up of the dust, without warning 

 she would rise up and stand with concentrated eyes and ears until the suspicion 

 of danger passed. Not until then would she shake or settle her ruffled plumage and 

 return to her occupation. 



I have never seen a Cheer take to a tree to roost nor even to a low bush, but have 

 seen a bird squat closely under a tuft of grass in full view of my observation tent 

 and have been certain, at least until the last tinge of afterglow faded and the night had 

 closed down, that the pheasant was still there. 



The Cheer does not come into very close touch with any other pheasants, although 

 I have watched a pair of birds in early morning, and have known by sight or hearing 

 that impeyan, tragopan and koklass were within a quarter of a mile. But I have never 

 actually seen the birds together on the same slope. The koklass keep pretty 

 consistently to the forest cover and the impeyans haunt the open spaces several 

 thousand feet higher. In all my many days of intensive study of the Cheer I saw 

 no direct tragedy, though the appearance of any large raptore sent the birds to shelter 

 like a flash. In fact they always discovered the eagle or hawk long before I did, 

 and it was always some time after they had vanished that, through the ventilation 

 wires of my observation tent, I was able to follow their glances upward to the dreaded 

 speck high in the blue sky. Living their lives thus in the open, they were past masters 

 in the matter of discrimination of dangerous from harmless raptores, and, unlike some 

 forest or jungle-haunting pheasants, I have never known them to pay more attention 

 than a quick, careful scrutiny to any vulture which happened to soar suddenly into view. 



Near the edge of a deodar forest I saw a big langur monkey one day galloping 

 along on three legs, with a large trailing object held close to his body in one of his 

 fore-arms. A glance through the glasses showed this to be a dead, bedraggled Cheer 

 Pheasant. Although my experience and that of others has shown that one may 

 approach very closely to these birds, so complete is their trust in their concealing 

 garb, and Wilson relates the almost incredible fact of being able to pick a Cheer up 

 in the hand, yet I doubt much whether these birds would ever permit themselves 

 to be caught by a langur. This bird was very probably wounded or dead when found 

 by the monkey. There is small doubt, however, that such animals work havoc among 

 eggs and chicks, and a black eagle has been shot with the inside of the mouth and 

 throat covered with small pieces of egg-shell, probably of this pheasant. I can say 

 nothing further with certainty of the enemies of the Cheer, but on excellent authority 

 (B. B. Osmoston) I am told that chief among these are the Indian marten, the 

 leopard-cat, the Nepal hawk-eagle, the crestless hawk-eagle and the jungle crow, 

 the latter, of course, taking the eggs and young chicks only. 



