INTRODUCTION xxxiii 



unlike any of the others, and is heard only among gregarious pheasants, and chiefly 

 when a flock has been scattered and is collecting again. The call to safety of a hen 

 to her brood is a very gentle form of the alarm note, repeated rapidly. Occasionally 

 in captivity, and rarely in a wild state, I have heard the most pleasing of all their 

 utterances. The evening song of the pheasant is an elaborate variation of the content 

 song, uttered from the branch to which the bird has flown to roost for the night, but 

 before it has settled down. A Tragopan, a Golden, two Kaleege and a Ring-necked 

 Pheasant have thus sung to me, and these experiences are among the most memorable 

 in my study of the birds. 



An entire chapter might be written on the crows and challenges of pheasants. Like 

 most of the activities of these birds, the crowing takes place chiefly at daylight and dusk, 

 especially in the tropics. In the mountains desultory challenging may go on all day. 

 The call of the Tragopan is more like the mournful wail of the Panda than the utterance 

 of a bird. The broken crow of the wild red Junglefowl differs not at all from that of a 

 bantam, while the varied calls of the other three species are a vocal protest against their 

 being considered in the line of descent of our domestic fowl. The isolated character 

 of Pucrasia is enhanced by the individuality of their crow, which gives rise to their 

 onomatopoetic name, Koklass. Another reliable character emphasizing the close rela- 

 tionship of the Kaleege, Silvers and Firebacks is their voice. It can neither be written 

 nor adequately imitated by the human larynx. There comes to the ear a low guttural 

 mumbling or rumbling, breaking suddenly into an abrupt, long-drawn-out, staccato, 

 liquid gurgle. The four genera in this group, ranging from the White-crested Kaleege 

 in Kashmir to the White-tailed Bornean bird, all have this peculiar mode of expression. 

 It has so often come to my ears as the climax of many hours of concentrated watching, 

 that I can never hear it without profound emotion. Next to the cosmopolitan crowing 

 of the domestic cock, the voice of the so-called English Pheasant is, perhaps, most widely 

 known. Whether heard on the uplands of England, on the steppes of the Caucasus, 

 among the rice-fields of Japan, or in our own American fields, the sudden broken, 

 trisyllabic note can never be mistaken. 



It is difficult to overestimate the importance which the voice of these birds plays 

 in their lives. With many it is so potent that its imitation, even clumsily achieved, 

 offers the easiest method of enticing them within gunshot. To the Argus more than 

 to any other, the call for a mate must be of vital importance, for not only does it call 

 in the night, from the depths of a tangled jungle, but, as we shall see, it is localized, 

 bound to one spot by the exigencies of its habits of life, so that without the constant, 

 far-reaching announcement of its presence and needs, the race must become extinct 

 in one generation. But the crowning mystery of these wonderful aerial vibrations, upon 

 which the very existence of the race of Argus depends, is the avoidance of the enemies 

 to whom the loud call must be as significant as it is to a rival cock or an expectant hen. 

 Fraught with all the deepest meaning of animal life as it must be to the latter, we, 

 with our human ears, can never call the crow of a pheasant a sweet sound. The law 

 of compensation operates here as elsewhere, and the difference between a Peacock's 

 plumage and its voice has become proverbial. A more raucous, penetrating sound 

 would be hard to imagine, yet it is perfectly adapted to its function in the wild life 

 of the bird. 



