CAUCASIAN PHEASANT 77 



occurrence of dense deciduous forests, into which they never penetrate, than by the rather 

 slight changes in altitude. 



The same holds true of the Rion district, the real native home of the bird, and to 

 which it owes its name. Here in natural clearings where the undergrowth is composed 

 of dense thickets of smilax and clematis the pheasant finds a congenial home. The 

 unbroken forests, which are not confined to the mountain slopes, are avoided. In lower 

 reaches of the Terek, Sulak and Kuban Rivers, as well as along the littoral zone of the 

 Caspian Sea, the pheasant becomes a dweller among reeds. Under similar conditions 

 it still lingers in the lower half of Astrakhan, and has formerly been taken several times 

 to the north of the city itself. 



The pheasant does not ascend any of the more elevated longitudinal valleys, most 

 of which are blocked by steep limestone hills, and even the upper Rion valley, with many 

 suitable places less than twenty-four hundred feet elevation, is wholly deserted by these 

 birds. In the southerly cross-valleys of the great Caucasus the bird is rare above Gori 

 in the Liachwa Plains, but abundant in the lower part of the Ksanka. A half-century 

 ago it was fairly common on the Suram Plains, in the vicinity of the many swift-flowing 

 brooks, but since then it has been completely exterminated. The same holds true for 

 the Rion and Quirila districts above Kutais. Formerly they were so abundant in the 

 Scharopan region that they were killed by the natives with sticks ; now they have 

 vanished. In the valley of the Aragwa they occur on the estate of Prince Muchrausky, 

 where they are strictly protected ; along the lower Jaral they do not quite extend to the 

 plains of Tionet ; they follow the course of the Alsanan almost to its origin at 

 the Narrow Ravine. The Tiflis bazaar-pheasants come chiefly from Kacheten and 

 Elizabethpol. Down the Kura they are found wherever jungle-like vegetation and 

 Tartar gardens thrive near water, but they prefer the islets in the river. 



In ascending the mountains, going from Achsu to Schemacha, pheasants are 

 constantly encountered associated with red-legged partridges. These heights are partly 

 covered with brushw^ood, partly under cultivation and support a luxuriant flora. To 

 the south the land has been cleared, and this, together with the water in the adjoining 

 valleys, affords a very favourable home for the pheasants. 



In the Araxes Valley they are first encountered eastward of the gap in the 

 Karabagher Mountains. There is no record of them higher up than this. In these 

 regions they avoid the arid steppes, the waterless stretches of desert and the dense 

 forests. Their distribution on the west bank of the Caspian and in the Araxes Valley 

 is sporadic, and where found they are found only at the edges of the sterile steppes, 

 among the reeds in the proximity of the sluggish, half-stagnant streams. 



While they occur in greater or less abundance in the lowlands of Talysch, and to 

 the northward over Kumbaschinsk and the southerly border of Mugan, they are entirely 

 absent toward the north in the bare, hot and partly waterless littoral zone of the 

 Caspian shore. They are also absent from the vicinity of Baku and the peninsula of 

 Apscheron. At Lenkoran the hunters have almost exterminated the birds, which are 

 valued up to one ruble. In the vicinity of Kubas and Derbent the pheasant is 

 abundant, and in the lowlands of the Sulak and the Terek, where again it is an 

 inhabitant of extensive patches of reeds, it is common. On the island of Sari, south 

 of Kysyl-agatsch-Busen, in the Caspian, pheasants were introduced many years ago by 



