LINEATED KALEEGE 57 



* 



the breeding season varies but little. The average is about the end of the first week 

 in April, while two weeks in each direction from this date will cover the majority 

 of the more advanced and delayed nesters. March i6, as recorded by Bingham, is 

 early, while an August record doubtless reflects the unseasonable efforts of a bird whose 

 first nest had been destroyed. I have no faith in the occasional assertion that this 

 species rears two broods. 



The loud call, while heard throughout the year, is more frequently uttered 

 before and during the breeding season, and very probably plays a part, however 

 subordinate, in challenge and courtship. The wing music is of much greater 

 importance, and is pre-eminent as a challenge. It is a very simple matter to lure 

 cocks within sight, by even a rather crude imitation. The usual native custom is 

 rapidly to twist a small stick, with a bit of stiff leaf or cloth inserted at the top. 

 While, as I have already said, this wing-beating seems to express many emotions, 

 that of arousing jealousy of a rival is the dominant one. 



When about to give this instrumental challenge the bird stands very erect, with 

 tail rather depressed, and, instantly spreading wide its wings, rapidly whirrs them 

 back and forth throughout a rather small arc. It is a very restricted segment of a 

 circle when compared with the similar, but greatly exaggerated effort resulting in the 

 drumming of our ruffed grouse. The wing-whirr of the kaleege — and this may be 

 taken as true of all the species — is markedly ventriloquial. When it seems low and 

 subdued it yet has a penetrating quality which will carry it far through jungle and 

 underbrush. 



I have heard it both subdued and again loud and reverberating, but never 

 to the extent described by Colonel Tickell, who says, "The noise in question is 

 the most extraordinary and the most unnatural — that is to say, the most unbird- 

 like, I have ever heard. I was one day, in the cold season of 1859-60, looking out 

 for a rhinoceros in the hills which skirt the eastern limits of the Tenasserim pro- 

 vinces. Some very recent marks of the animal were pointed out to me by my Karen 

 guides, and, following the traces through the jungle down the hillside, I was at last 

 brought up by a profound ravine. While some of my party left me to reach the 

 bottom of this dell by a more circuitous and practicable route, and I remained perched 

 on a steep declivity, a singular reverberating sound reached my ears, proceeding 

 apparently from the deep valley below me. It was a tremulous, subdued noise, as 

 if the mountains were shuddering in an ague fit, and I, who was thinking of 

 nothing but rhinoceroses at the time, and had made up my mind to see a host of 

 them emerge from the dense jungle as the result of so strange a symphony, was 

 utterly amazed by my Karen companions telling me the noise was made by the 

 'Yits' (hill pheasants). I could not help smiling at such a singularly literal 

 illustration of the fabled mountain in labour with the nascitur ridiculus mus 

 enacted by these funny birds. I have only on that occasion heard this extraordinary 

 sound, though for weeks at a time journeying and living in forests abounding in 

 hill pheasants." 



The tremulous quality identifies it at once as the challenge of a kaleege, but it 

 would require a vivid imagination to picture a rhinoceros as its author. While the 

 kaleege as a whole are pugnacious, yet there seems no reason to think that the 



VOL. II 



