250 The Impeyan Pheasant. 



with a startling flapping or flutter of the wings, scattering the 

 dead leaves in a shower around, and fly headlong into the 

 wood with a succession o£ short, piercing, shrieking whistles, 

 which appear to act as a warning to some distant companions, 

 for their calls are often heard in reply. When feeding quietly 

 and in security the Monaul has a sweet, mellow call — a long 

 plaintive note — which it utters from time to time, especially 

 of a morning and after sunset. It has the same melancholy 

 effect on the ear as the creaking whistle of the curlew winging 

 his way along the mudflats as evening settles over the lonely 

 shore. The call has a rather melancholy sound, or it may 

 be that as the shades of a dreary winter's evening begin to close 

 on the snow-covered hills around, the cold and cheerless aspect 

 of Nature, with which it seems quite in unison, makes it 

 appear so. 



" The Monaul breeds towards the end of spring. The 

 courtship is carried on in the chestnut and large timber forests 

 before the birds ascend, during the summer heats, towards 

 the regions of perpetual snow. It is generally near the upper 

 limits of these forests, where the trees are dwarfed and sparingly 

 scattered, that the hen lays and incubates three to five eggS) 

 in a depression on the ground. The eggs are of a dull cream 

 or pale buff colour, sprinkled with reddish brown. Like most 

 gallinaceous birds, the Monaul may be said to be omnivorous. 

 Those I have had in confinement ate rice and grain readily, 

 as well as insects, worms, maggots, flesh, hzards, fish, eggs, &c. 

 It is a diligent digger, and the slightly expanded tip of the 

 mandible acts like a hoe or shovel. I had several of these 

 birds in an aviary at MuUye, in Tirhoot. They were strong 

 and vigorous as long as the cold weather lasted, and soon 

 became tame, and did not succumb to the atmosphere of the 

 plains till June, when the rains had set in. Unlike the smaller 

 hill pheasants, they were not pugnacious. If shipped off early 

 in the cold weather from Calcutta, these birds could easily 

 enough be transported to England, where the temperature 

 would suit them, if there were any means of giving them shelter 



