r66 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



moment, glanced upward, and uttering a single faint squeak, dived headlong from view. 

 Instantaneously all the others vanished, and none reappeared again. I tried my best to 

 discover the cause of this sudden terror, but could not, and shall never know what sight 

 or sound drove my small friends to cover. I doubt if they have the keenness of eyesight 

 to detect a bird of prey while yet high in the air, at any such distance as birds are able 

 to discern their enemy. 



Some twenty minutes later my roaming eye fell upon a beautiful little form, standing 

 a few feet outside the line of dwarf birches above and slightly down the valley from my 

 niche. Three more musk deer soon followed and stood for a full minute staring at my 

 low mound of canvas. But they soon seemed to accept it as a rather unusual boulder 

 and began nosing among the grass stems and working gradually down hill. 



I was intensely interested in the small deer, and watched their every movement 

 until they passed from view. Nothing else appeared except now and then a magpie or 

 a black-and-white wagtail which flew over. One of the latter alighted for a moment on 

 a stone half-way down the hill and sang a few notes before drifting on towards the north. 

 An hour later a flock of black-and-white-headed buntings dashed down around me, 

 probably on migration, and for ten minutes fed on the ground, searching for seeds 

 among the sparse grass stems, or singing in unison, four or five twittering sweetly at 

 one time almost within reach of my hand. They were jolly, plump birds, and every day 

 several such flocks would pass on their way, doubtless to breeding haunts far to the 

 north in Siberia. 



It was while the buntings were still about my tent, and just as my attention was 

 drawn to a titmouse twittering among the nearest birches, that I saw the advance 

 guard of a flock 'of Eared-pheasants. Buntings, titmouse, musk deer, all were forgotten, 

 and I was filled with the old thrill of supreme joy at having accomplished the object 

 which had brought me so far. They were even less suspicious than the musk deer, and 

 hardly gave me a glance as they passed slowly within ten or twenty yards. Six came 

 close together at first, then a group of ten, then three more, and I was keenly interested 

 to observe that with these latter was a musk deer, keeping near but not actually among 

 them. The other associations which I had recorded were at once brought to mind — the 

 musk deer, laughing thrushes and the kaleege pheasants of Burma ; the chevrotain and 

 the white-tails of Borneo. The three groups of pheasants soon merged into a general 

 flock, and the nineteen birds moved slowly past, giving me every possible opportunity 

 for observation. Except when now and then I caught sight of the stout spurs on the 

 sturdy legs, I could see no distinction between males and females. 



As in so many other cases of plainly coloured pheasants, I was impressed with the 

 remarkable protective colouring of the birds when they were perfectly motionless and the 

 complete absence of that phenomenon when they moved so much as a leg, or gave even 

 the slightest turn to the head or neck. As they passed away down the hillside this 

 impression increased, and it was really most striking to see how completely the quiescent 

 bird merged with its surroundings. The slope was dotted with boulders of all shapes, 

 and the motionless pheasant became merely another such inanimate object, its colours 

 of drab, brown and dingy white being those of the weathered, lichened rocks and 

 dead grass. 



When the flock passed through longish grass stubble, they stood higher, took slower 



