WILD KALEEGE HYBRIDS 87 



plaintive tremolo. The young birds — nearly in adult plumage as they were — now and 

 then varied these sweeter notes with chick-like seeps ! and peeps I 



Gradually working together, with the laughing thrushes drifting along like 

 scattered leaves or bounding with high, strong leaps over the low bushes and logs, 

 all united in a loose flock, and began feeding slowly downward, usually over a 

 southern slope. The greater activity of the thrushes usually carried them several 

 yards in advance before they had gone far, but many times I watched the birds at 

 a distance, and saw them keep together for a thousand feet or more of descent. 

 In such a case I would locate the flock as it crossed an open space well up on the 

 mountain, and making a detour, and concealing myself far below in the line of their 

 descent, I would be almost certain to intercept them before they reached water. 

 The thrushes were almost wholly insectivorous, while the pheasants chose animal 

 and vegetable food in equal quantities. 



Whether the relation is mutually helpful in any way or not, it certainly exists. 

 And, as I have said elsewhere, while the association may be due solely to the social 

 love of birds, it is certainly true that the laughing thrushes many times give the 

 pheasants warning of danger visible from trees, which the latter on the ground could 

 never detect until too late ; then, while the pheasants scratched or pecked to pieces 

 some fallen log, I have again and again seen several thrushes stand around, now 

 and then springing into the air to seize an insect which had escaped by flight from 

 the larger birds. 



Two species of laughing thrushes are thus found in intimate association with 

 the pheasants, the black-gorgeted and the black-throated. These were usually in 

 separate flocks of from six to eighteen individuals, but now and then I observed 

 both species feeding together. When a bare patch of ground or a wide trail is 

 encountered, where they are suspicious of danger* the pheasants cross it by a quick 

 dash, the laughing thrushes by a single scaling flight. 



After drinking at the rivulet or pools in the ravine bottoms, by which time it 

 is almost dusk, the birds fly up into trees to roost for the night. I have never 

 actually seen this, being defeated either by the sudden descent of darkness or the 

 wary scouting of the birds before they retire. But again and again I have heard 

 the heavy, hollow beating against air and leaves as the birds reach a first and often 

 a second branch before they settle down, after mumbling a few smothered, low notes. 

 By aid of strong moonlight I have seen them sound asleep, seldom alone, but two 

 or three close together, a few feet from the trunk, head under wing. 



The few crickets whose instruments were not yet silenced by the chill of the 

 autumn night still shrilled faintly ; small owls hawked about after droning beetles ; 

 a podargus fanned my cheek like the ghost of a bird, and far off in the blackness, 

 toward the wild Chinese mountains, came the moan of a leopard. As I turned home- 

 ward, a wind— first prophet of to-morrow's storm— rattled the bamboos, drawing 

 forth weird sounds which seemed to verify the Kachin's belief in the spirit nats 

 which wander along every trail at night searching for evil to do. For this reason 

 these wild hillmen will never travel at night, and as I trudged toward camp from 

 the sleeping pheasants, I knew that whatever dangers the darkness hid at that hour, 

 it was from animal not human foes. 



