BLYTH'S TRAGOPAN 



Tragopan blythi blythi (Jerdon) 



A single male Tragopan, captured forty miles north of Assam, has recently been 

 described as a subspecies of blythi. 



NAMES. — Specific : blythi, named for Edward Blyth, an English naturalist, for many years curator of the 

 Calcutta Museum. English: Blyth's Horned Pheasant, Grey-bellied Tragopan. French: Tragopan de Blyth. 

 German : Blasses Satyrhuhn. Vernacular : Hurr-hurrea (Assamese) ; Sunsuria (Golden-bird, Bengali) ; Gnu 

 (Angami Nag'a) ; Chingtho (Kuki). 



Brief Description. — Male : Neck and chest, most of the head and bend of wing orange-red ; upper parts 

 sides and flanks black mottled with buff and each feather with a subterminal white spot flanked by two large 

 dark-red patches ; flights and tail mottled, without white spots ; breast and belly smoky grey. Female : Above, 

 dark grizzled olive brown, each feather with two lateral black ocelli; chin and throat white; below much paler 

 than the upper surface, a central white ocellus on the feathers of the mid-belly. 



Type. — Described from a captive male bird in " Sadiya, Upper Assam," by Jerdon, Proc. Asiatic Soc. 

 Bengal, 1870, p. 60. Now in the collection of the British Museum. 



RANGE. — North-eastern Assam. 



BLYTH'S TRAGOPAN IN ITS HAUNTS 



This was the only species of the five splendid birds of this group which I was 

 unable to observe in a wild state. The eastern Himalayas proper and the Burmese- 

 Yunnanese region contain so many interesting types of Phasianidae that I neglected to 

 visit Assam, thereby missing the chance of studying the one species which is confined to 

 that region. 



One of the best field ornithologists of India, Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker, has, however, 

 had the good fortune to meet with this bird several times, and it is through his courtesy 

 that I am able to present this picture of the wild bird. 



"Although common in parts of the Naga Hill Ranges at elevations over six 

 thousand feet, Blyth's Tragopan is but a rare straggler into the adjoining ranges of 

 North Cachar, and it was, therefore, some years after I was posted in that district before 

 I came across it in a wild state. 



"When at last I did see it, the meeting was most unexpected, for at that time I had 

 no idea that this magnificent pheasant ever wandered so low as six thousand feet, the 

 elevation at which I was then camping. 



"The country surrounding my camp was of a very rugged and broken character; 

 the main range of Hills, known as the Barail Range, running almost due north-east and 

 north-west, and having on either side two rapidly flowing Hill streams — to the west the 

 Jennam, and to the east the Jiri. These streams, though full of Mahseer, and mag- 

 nificent from an Isaac Waltonian point of view, were too small except in their lower 

 reaches, during the cold season, even for the use of dugouts. In the rains, on the other 



