WHITE EARED-PHEASANT 



Crossoptilon tibetanum (Hodgson) 



NAMES. — Specific : tibetanum, from Tibet, the home of this pheasant. English : White, or Hodgson's, or 

 Tibetan Eared-pheasant ; Snow Pheasant. Vernacular : Bhote Dafe 1 (Nepal) ; Shagga or Sharkar (Tibet). 



BRIEF DESCRIPTION. — Male : Crown with short, curly, black feathers ; elongated ear tufts, and entire body 

 plumage above and below, pure white, becoming greyish on wing and tail-coverts ; flight feathers usually brownish. 

 Twenty feathers in tail, dark, glossed with greenish and with purple at the tip. Short, conical spurs. Female : 

 Similar to the male, except slightly smaller in size and without spurs. 



Type. — "Phasianus tibetanus," Hodgson, Thibet, Jour. Asiatic Soc, Bengal, VII. 1838, p. 864, pi. 46. Now 

 in the British Museum. 



RANGE. — The mountains of north-western Yunnan, western Szechuan and south-eastern Tibet. 

 THE BIRD IN ITS HAUNTS 



One day, late in the year, in the heart of the wilderness of northern Yunnan, we 

 crossed a rushing torrent at the bottom of a great mountain gorge. Not once, but 

 several times we braved the boiling waters. The trail was exceedingly rough and 

 steep, and covered with loose, round stones or with wet, slippery soil, but our horses 

 carried us well. I had a Chinese guide and a native of some unknown tribe to carry 

 the guns. 



The lower part of the trail led through old, half-open, cleared fields, long aban- 

 doned by the Chinese, and bamboo and deciduous forests varied with dog-wood and 

 an occasional cherry in unseasonable bloom. Half-wild grain fields appeared here 

 and there even high up on the mountains, and it is remarkable how hardy these 

 seemed, apparently little affected by the early frosts. They marked the old sites of 

 huts, which with their owners had long since vanished from the earth. 



Then we would dip down into a cool, damp ravine. At about seven thousand 

 feet elevation we entered a beautiful forest similar in character to that of Jorepokri 

 near Darjeeling, rhododendrons and oaks, covered — twig, branch and trunk — with long 

 waving streamers and a thick coat of moss, yellow-green and of a hundred other tints. 



Ferns flourished in profusion — real cold-weather ferns, although just before we 

 entered this zone we had passed tree ferns at their maximum — great fifteen- and twenty- 

 foot beauties. 



Berries were in abundance — many poisonous, such as those wonderful, bluish- 

 purple globes, glowing in the cool sunbeams which filtered through the moss. These 

 brilliant fruits were strung beneath curving stems, which rose above the thick, cool 

 moss — while everywhere below, over the ground, ran a maze of ruby berries, like those 

 of our partridge vine. 



Now and then tall chestnuts appeared, also clad in the dense moss. Begonias 

 bb 185 



