PRINCE OF WALES'S PHEASANT 



Phasiamts colchicus principalis Sclater 



Names.— English : Prince of Wales's, Murghab or Tejend Pheasant 



Type. — Locality : Bala-Murghab, Afghanistan. Describer : Dr. P. L. Sclater. Place of Description : Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. London, 1885, p. 322. Present Location of Type: British Museum. 



SUBSPECIFIC Characters.— Male : Has the white wing-coverts o{ persicus, but the rump is bronze red and 

 the lower back, rump and upper tail-coverts usually lack the purple-lake gloss ; the breast is broadly tipped with 

 purplish-red bronze, and the flanks with dark green or purplish blue ; the scapulars are widely margined with 

 black. Female: In general much paler than the females ofc colchicus ■A.\-\di c. persicus, the ground colour of the 

 mantle paler rufous, and the general colour of the body very pale sandy buff. It is very close to the female of 

 chrysomelas. The birds from the western part of the range have been separated by Bogdanow as komarowi, but on 

 a wholly variable and unstable character : the greenish instead of a purplish gloss on the blackish tips of the flank 

 feathers. The individuals upon which this name was based were obtained in 1883 by the Russian traveller 

 Zarudny, who explored the Turcoman country while it was in the midst of political uprisings. His notes and 

 skins were sent to Prof. Bogdanow, who published the description in 1886, a year after Dr. Sclater had named 

 principalis. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



North-eastern Persia, north-western Afghanistan and southern Turkestan, 

 including the Merv Desert. It is found in the valley of the river known in Turkestan 

 as the Tejend and in Afghanistan as the Heri Rud. It also ranges along the lesser 

 streams which flow from the eastern slopes of the Darah-Gaz, Kalat-i-Nadir and other 

 Persian Mountains to the plains of Tejend, such as the Dushak, Kaahka and Lutfabad. 

 On the Heri-Rud it has been found as far as Kafir-Kala, but has been exterminated in 

 Ahal-Teke, and to the west reaches only to Baba-Durmas, about seventy-five kilometres 

 east of Askhabad. It occurs in the Russian and Afghan portions of the Murghab 

 Valley, together with the oases of Mero, Zelotan and Pandj-deh. 



It is bounded on the north by Repetek and the Kara-Kum sands, and on the west 

 and south by the watershed of the Caspian and inland basins. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



The first specimens of this bird were obtained by members of the Afghan Delimita- 

 tion Commission. They w^ere the property of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and were 

 named in 1885 by Dr. Sclater and exhibited by him at the London Zoological Society. 

 Dr. J. E. T. Aitchison, the naturalist of the commission, writes as follows of this form : 

 "The specimens of this pheasant were all got on the banks of the Bala-Morghab, where 

 it occurs in considerable numbers in the tamarisk and grass jungle growing in the bed 

 of the river. More than four hundred were killed on the march of thirty miles up this 

 river. It not only wades through the water in trying to make from one point of vantage 

 to another, but swims, and seems to be quite at home in these thickets, where there is 



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