THE GREY PEACOCK PHEASANT 63 



bout du bee, son heureuse trouvaille, il invite sa femelle, par un gazouillement charmant 

 et prolonge, a venir profiter de la bonne aubaine. D^s que celle-ci s'avance, I'Eperonnier 

 se redresse sur ses pattes, enfle fortement son plumage, puis lui lance la friandise si 

 precieusement conservee, et, au moment ou elle vient pour la ramasser, il la salue a sa 

 fa^on en s'inclinant vivement, et en deployant, tout-a-coup, les ailes et la queue. II se 

 met alors a faire la roue en forme d'eventail. A ce moment, son ceil brille du plus vif 

 dclat, et toutes les ocelles apparaissent dans leurs plus brillantes couleurs, tout en 

 projetant de belles teintes irisees, suivant I'effet du jour. C'est alors qu'on pent juger de 

 la grande beaute de cet oiseau dont les ocelles, en forme d'yeux brillants, sont rangees 

 avec la plus parfaite symetrie et par ordre de grandeur/' 



Charles Darwin in his ''Descent of Man" (Westminster Edition, pp. 404-405) devotes 

 a paragraph and a wood-cut to the display of the Peacock Pheasant. He says in part : 

 ''The tail and wing-feathers of this bird are ornamented with beautiful ocelli, like those 

 on the peacock's train. Now when the peacock displays himself, he expands and erects 

 his tail transversely to his body, for he stands in front of the female, and has to show 

 off, at the same time, his rich blue throat and breast. But the breast of the Polyplectron 

 is obscurely coloured, and the ocelli are not confined to the tail-feathers. Consequently 

 the Polyplectron does not stand in front of the female ; but he erects and expands his 

 tail-feathers a little obliquely, lowering the expanded wing on the same side, and raising 

 that on the opposite side. In this attitude the ocelli over the whole body are exposed 

 at the same time before the eyes of the admiring female in one grand bespangled 

 expanse. To whichever side she may turn, the expanded wings and the obliquely-held 

 tail are turned towards her." As Pocock has shown (" Avicultural Magazine," 191 1, 

 pp. 229 et seq), this is only half the truth. But I have been able to detect no sign of 

 there being two distinct displays. If we admit two we might as well add a dozen more. 

 The cock, from the beginning of his courtship in the first warm days of early spring to 

 the full achievement of his frontal display, goes through many stages, each increasing 

 in complexity and vigour, but all phases merely, not separate types of display. 



One of the first signs of excitement is the repeated raising and lowering of the 

 recurved crest, its erection bringing it forward until it partly conceals the beak. Then, 

 when the female appears in the distance, we may notice a quivering and a partial spreading 

 of both wings and tail. This may increase in emotional intensity, or at the recurrence 

 of a week of cold, unseasonable weather disappear entirely. The wing- and tail-spreading 

 soon reaches the stage of definite focusing on the female, and as she walks about the 

 cock will keep all the upper ocellated plumage possible in full view. I have seen all 

 sorts of positions assumed, both that given by Darwin in his wood-cut, and the pen-and- 

 ink drawing in the "Avicultural Magazine," and many others, all dependent on the 

 cock's relative position to that of the hen. I have seen him display thus from a perch 

 and from the heart of a dense-foliaged evergreen, where his every movement was 

 cramped. And I have seen a bird in a cruelly low-roofed shipping crate flatten himself 

 and spread over all the floor surface possible when a hen in an opposite crate pushed 

 out her head between the bars. The attempt in each case is so to spread the tail and 

 the secondary feathers that they may simultaneously impinge upon the vision of the 

 hen— the display in general thus representing the extreme in the courtship of other 

 pheasants which have only the lateral showing off. 



