i86 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



to beat her out in vain. She seemed to be of a deep brown colour, and in running 

 kept her head low and her tail partly erect. 



''At Lingshuy (S.E. Hainan) we found grave-mounds on the edge of the jungle 

 strewn with cocks' feathers, as if the wild fowl were in the habit of meeting on the 

 mounds to fight. At Yu-lin-kan (S. Hainan) I heard them repeatedly chuckling in 

 the jungle quite close to me ; but there was no getting a shot at them. In the dense 

 woods about Nychow (S. Hainan) they were particularly common, and we heard and 

 saw them often. When put up in the open, they make at once for the covert, flying 

 heavily, with the body and tail nearly perpendicular. I saw a Le man put a cock 

 bird up ; and marking it drop into the wood, I hastened to the spot. It gave a 

 crow, ' Tok-tok tok tok chea ' — as a domestic hen does when frightened. My follower 

 raised it from the thick bush with a stone ; it flew a short distance, and fell again 

 into the thicket. Our party returned to the boat without a Junglefowl, and we saw 

 no more of them in the course of our cruise." 



HOME LIFE 



The breeding season of the Red Junglefowl in the northern sub-Himalayan part 

 of their range extends from February, when the males begin their challenging, combats 

 and courtship, until the end of May, when the few hardy individuals which make 

 their home well up in the hills, deposit their eggs. In central Burma eggs have been 

 taken from March to June. As we follow the birds southward throughout their 

 range, there is, as usual among birds in general, an increasing laxity in the precise 

 limits of the nesting months, and in the Malay Peninsula young birds have been 

 recorded from February to late August. 



In the first few pages of this monograph I have mentioned the courtship of the 

 wild Red Junglefowl. Even in the degenerate domesticated rooster we still see hints 

 of this feral chivalry, but as with flight and many habits of life this centuries-old 

 inmate of our barn-yards has let his manners become sadly slipshod. Too often his 

 procedure is to sidle up to a hen, and make only one or two half-hearted circlings, 

 with wing awkwardly drooped, an atavistic effort to reveal beauties of plumage which 

 are no longer his. Then if the hen, obeying her innate impulse, shows but slight 

 interest, his patience is at an end, and the courtship degenerates into a mere rough- 

 and-tumble pursuit and capture by sheer force. We see much the same thing in 

 the house sparrow. 



One noteworthy thing about the courtship of the domestic cock is the rattling 

 croak or harsh crooning sound he often makes when going through the display. The 

 wild birds are absolutely silent when they are courting, uttering a cluck now and 

 then between displays, but giving no hint of the rather coarse garrulity which 

 characterizes their captive relation. 



The little definite information we have of wild birds shows that Junglefowl differ 

 in no way from pheasants in general in the reliance they place in persistent showing 

 off to produce some effect on the hens. Hypnotic rather than sentimental though 

 this probably is, yet it is an effect gained solely through emotional channels. The 



