STONE'S PHEASANT 



Phasianus colchmis elegans Elliot 



Names. — Subspecific : elegans, Latin, elegant, graceful. English : Stone's Pheasant. Vernacular : Tarechi 

 (Lola), Wucru (Kachin), Tso-ka (Tibetan), 



Type. — Locality : Yun-ling Mountains. Describer : D. G. Elliot. Place of Description : Ann. and Mag. 

 Nat. Hist. (4), VI. 1870, p. 312. 



Subspecific Characters. — Male : Differs from vlangalii in having the flanks coppery maroon instead of 

 golden buff, and the mantle and scapulars maroon instead of sandy red. P.c. decollatus and strauchi have the dark 

 green of the back broken by bands of the yellow or coppery red of the chest, while in elegans the green extends 

 unbroken to the middle of the chest and breast. Female : Very close to the females of the neighbouring forms on 

 the east and north, but differing from colchicus colchicus in the white throat and fore-neck, and the irregularly 

 black-barred underparts. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



Mountains of eastern Tibet, south-western Szechuan, north-western Yunnan, 

 Kachin Hills, and Northern and Southern Shan States. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



This is the only member of the genus which occurs within the boundaries of 

 British India. I heard pheasants calling near Myitkyina while I was outfitting for my 

 expedition eastward into Yunnan, but had no opportunity of searching for them. Not 

 until I was on my way back, after studying the Gennaeus hybrids beyond Sadon, did I 

 find elegans. A half-eaten bird taken from a Kachin dead-fall was easily identified as 

 this form, with the unusual character of a posterior white collar, almost half an inch in 

 width. Two days later I shot a male pheasant in nearly adult plumage, close to the 

 slope down which the flocks of kaleege came each day to drink. 



I learned nothing of the habits of this bird, and the natives called them merely wild 

 hen, Tarechi. 



W. R. Zappey, who has shot these birds in western Szechuan, writes me that he 

 found them from Wa Shan, the Lolo country, to Tachien-lu, at from five to ten thousand 

 feet altitude. They occurred more frequently in grassy and bushy places near cultiva- 

 tion, and kept in small families. One day, while he was shooting these birds, he drove 

 a male out from a patch of cover into a ploughed field. A golden eagle saw it and made 

 a swoop. The pheasant squatted on a clod of earth until the eagle was very close, and 

 then by a half-run, half-fly of a few feet to one side, avoided its assailant. The eagle 

 rose, circled a few times, and swooped again, and again the pheasant dodged sideways. 

 This time the eagle gave up the chase. 



Captain Davies found these pheasants near the summits of the ranges in Western 



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