26 GAME BIRDS OF INDIA. 



when hatched, and is seldom found with them. The call of the 

 Monaul is a loud plaintive whistle, which is often heard in the 

 forest at daybreak or towards evening, and occasionally at all 

 hours of the day. In severe weather, numbers may be heard call- 

 ing in different quarters of the wood before they retire to roost. 

 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. 



" From April to the commencement of the cold season, the 

 Monaul is rather wild and shy, # but this soon gives way to the 

 all-taming influence of winter's frosts and snows ; and from October 

 it gradually becomes less so, till it may be said to be quite the 

 reverse ; but as it is often found in places nearly free from under- 

 wood, and never attempts to escape observation by concealing 

 itself in the grass or bushes, it is perhaps sooner alarmed, and 

 at a greater distance than other Pheasants, and may therefore 

 appear at all times a little wild and timid. In spring, it often 

 rises a long way in front, and it is difficult to get near it when 

 it again alights, if it does not at once fly too far to follow ; but in 

 winter, it may often be approached within gunshot on the ground, 

 and when flushed it generally alights on a tree at no great distance, 

 and you may then walk quite close to it before it again takes 

 wm£. 



" In the forest, when alarmed, it generally rises at once without 

 calling or running far on the ground ; but on the open glades or 

 grassy slopes, or any place to which it comes only to feed, it will, 

 if not hard pressed, run or walk slowly away in preference to 

 getting up ; and a distant bird, when alarmed by the rising of 

 others, will occasionally begin and continue calling for some time 

 while on the ground. It gets up with a loud fluttering and a 

 rapid succession of shrill screeching whistles, often continued 

 till it alights, when it occasionally commences its ordinary 

 loud and plaintive call, and continues it for some time. 

 In winter, when one or two birds have been flushed, all within 

 hearing soon get alarmed ; if they are collected together, they 

 get up in rapid succession : if distantly scattered, bird after bird 



