GREEN JAPANESE PHEASANT 131 



too dangerous. As I encircled it I now and then snatched a clean lettuce-leaf or a 

 fragrant onion from the clean-weeded lines of vegetables. In the sheltered places the 

 buzzing of early flies hinted of summer. 



Suddenly I sighted a red flag waving frantically back and forth and near it 

 distinguished several crouching figures. Approaching closer I found a picket of 

 Japanese soldiery signalling to a distant hillock, where with glasses I discovered two 

 or three companies of infantry with mounted officers. 



Realizing that few pheasants would be found in the vicinity of sham battles 

 I turned abruptly to the right and soon lost sight of the little yellow men whose game 

 of war was working havoc with the vegetable fields of the poor farmers. 



Everywhere I remarked the absence of cattle and horses, but soon realized that 

 there is no pasture for them. Every inch of level or tillable soil is given up to farming, 

 and the rice straw is all bundled and saved for roof thatch. 



A rasping screech and a whirr of wings came from behind a pile of these bundles, 

 and I flushed my first Green Pheasant. The sudden flight ended in the usual long 

 scale to the ground. Walking rapidly upward, through dwarf pine and dead bamboo 

 grass, I concealed myself in a pile of brush and there waited. The day was a perfect 

 one, and the mellow earth gave forth the delicious odour of thawing warmth, which 

 only the dweller in temperate zones can know and love. 



A brown-headed shrike sat on a dead pine shrub and watched with me. For two 

 hours he saw nothing edible, and for the same time I detected no pheasants, although 

 the spring call of the males came clearly from two points not far away. Then I 

 attempted to stalk them and failed to get even a glimpse. Such are the haunts of the 

 Green Japanese Pheasants, and such was my first day among them. 



GENERAL DISTRIBUTION 



The Green Japanese Pheasant is not found in Yezo, neither in the smaller Kurile 

 Islands to the north or in Tsushima or the southern Loochoo Islands. It is distributed 

 in suitable places throughout Honda, Shikoku and Kiushiu, as well as in the smaller 

 Seven Isles of Izu and in Sado Island in the Japan Sea. The absence of pheasants 

 from Yezo is another confirmation of the important barrier formed by the deep straits 

 of Tsugaru, which for many ages have apparently separated the remainder of Japan 

 from all connection with the Asiatic mainland. Monkeys share the southern distribution 

 in common with the pheasants, while grouse occur only on Yezo and northward. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



This bird, the most distinct of all the Phasianus group of pheasants, is separated 

 from the others by a water barrier. On the three good-sized islands which form its 

 home it is a bird of the lowlands and seldom reaches any great height on the ranges 

 and mountains of the interior. This preference for low altitudes makes it essentially 

 an inhabitant of the coastal region, although in Honda in some places it extends quite 

 across the island, following the low valleys and gaps in the ridges. Again I have 

 seen it and heard its call within a few hundred yards of the surf breaking on the shore. 



Search for any Japanese pheasant must begin and usually ends within sight or 

 close to human dwellings or tilled fields. This, combined with the dense population 



