LINEATED KALEEFGE 57 
the breeding season varies but little. The average is about the end of the first week 
in April, while two weeks in each direction from this date will cover the majority 
of the more advanced and delayed nesters. March 16, as recorded by Bingham, is 
early, while an August record doubtless reflects the unseasonable efforts of a bird whose 
first nest had been destroyed. I have no faith in the occasional assertion that this 
Species rears two broods. 
The loud call, while heard throughout the year, is more frequently uttered 
before and during the breeding season, and very probably plays a part, however 
subordinate, in challenge and courtship. The wing music is of much greater 
importance, and is pre-eminent as a challenge. It is a very simple matter to lure 
cocks within sight, by even a rather crude imitation. The usual native custom is 
rapidly to twist a small stick, with a bit of stiff leaf or cloth inserted at the top. 
While, as I have already said, this wing-beating seems to express many emotions, 
that of arousing jealousy of a rival is the dominant one. 
When about to give this instrumental challenge the bird stands very erect, with 
tail rather depressed, and, instantly spreading wide its wings, rapidly whirrs them 
back and forth throughout a rather small arc. It is a very restricted segment of a 
circle when compared with the similar, but greatly exaggerated effort resulting in the 
drumming of our ruffed grouse. The wing-whirr of the kaleege—and this may be 
taken as true of all the species—is markedly ventriloquial. When it seems low and 
subdued it yet has a penetrating quality which will carry it far through jungle and 
underbrush. 
I have heard it’ both subdued and again loud and reverberating, but never 
to the extent described by Colonel Tickell, who says, “The noise in question is 
the most extraordinary and the most unnatural—that is to say, the most unbird- 
like, I have ever heard. I was one day, in the cold season of 1859-60, looking out 
for a rhinoceros in the hills which skirt the eastern limits of the Tenasserim pro- 
vinces. Some very recent marks of the animal were pointed out to me by my Karen 
guides, and, following the traces through the jungle down the hillside, I was at last 
brought up by a profound ravine. While some of my party left me to reach the 
bottom of this dell by a more circuitous and practicable route, and I remained perched 
on a steep declivity, a singular reverberating sound reached my ears, proceeding 
apparently from the deep valley below me. It was a tremulous, subdued noise, as 
if the mountains were shuddering in an ague fit, and I, who was thinking of 
nothing but rhinoceroses at the time, and had made up my mind to see a host of 
them emerge from the dense jungle as the result of so strange a symphony, was 
utterly amazed by my Karen companions telling me the noise was made by the 
‘Yits’ (hill pheasants). I could not help smiling at such a_ singularly literal 
illustration of the fabled mountain in labour with the xascitur vidiculus mus 
enacted by these funny birds. I have only on that occasion heard this extraordinary 
sound, though for weeks at a time journeying and living in forests abounding in 
hill pheasants.” 
The tremulous quality identifies it at once as the challenge of a kaleege, but it 
would require a vivid imagination to picture a rhinoceros as its author. While the 
kaleege as a whole are pugnacious, yet there seems no reason to think that the 
VOL, II i 
