ZARUDNY'S PHEASANT 



Phasianus colchicus zarudnyi Buturlin 



Names. — Subspecific : zarudnyi^ after Mr. Zarudny, a Russian traveller and collector. English : Zarudny's 

 or Chardjui Pheasant. 



Type. — Locality : " from Khiva to Chardjui." Describer : Zarudny under the preoccupied name of medius, 

 which Buturlin changed to zarudnyi. Place of Description : Ornith. Fauna Transcasp., 1896, p. 481. 



Subspecific Characters. — The terminal black of the scapulars is very narrow, not broad as va principalis ; 

 a white collar may be present and almost complete, or represented by a few lateral traces, or wholly absent ; the 

 purple of the breast is darker, the flank tips greenish, and the feathers of the throat have greenish instead of 

 purple edges. Three additional forms have been described, two of which, gordius and tschardjuensis, I heartily 

 agree with Hartert, are to be considered as individual variations of zarudnyi, while the third jabae, may be 

 similarly explained, or else considered as a hybrid or transition between zarudnyi and bianchii. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



The valley of the middle course of the Amu-Daria or Oxus River. To the north 

 it descends to the Petro-Alexandrovsk, there almost touching the southernmost range 

 of ckrysomeias, and to the south it has been taken at Karnas, not far from the 

 Afghanistan border, and the eastern point of occurrence of bianchii. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



Of the habits of these pheasants nothing has been recorded, but Lord Curzon tells 

 us that ''the bed of the Amu-Daria — i.e. the depression which is covered in time of 

 high water — is here between two and three miles wide, though in summer, when more 

 swollen by the melted snows of Hindu Kush and the Pamir, the inundated surface 

 sometimes extends five miles. In the autumn and winter, when the waters have 

 shrunk, the channel is confined within its two banks and is then from half-a-mile to 

 a mile in width, flowing with a rapid current of most irregular depth over a shifting and 

 sandy bottom. Mud-banks, covered with ooze or sand, show where the current has 

 only recently subsided. Still, however, did it merit the title * the great Oxus stream — 

 the yellow Oxus.' The colour of the water is very dirty, coffee-hued brown, the 

 facsimile of that of the Nile, but it is extremely healthful and can be drunk with 

 impunity. I was strongly reminded of the appearance of this great river by the 

 formation of its bed, by the structure of its banks, and by the scenery and life which it 

 displayed, of many a landscape on the Nile in upper Egypt. There is the same fringe 

 of intensely fertile soil along its shores, with the same crouching clay-built villages, and 

 even a Bokharan counterpart to the Sakkiyeh and shadoof for raising and distributing 

 the life-giving waters of the stream. Only, on the Oxus there is no cliff like the eastern 

 wall of the Nile at Gebel-el-Tayr, and alas, in this northern latitude there is no belt 

 of coroneted palms." 



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