CHINESE SILVER KALEEGE 67 
This observer writes that “in spite of its being found generally in grass, rather 
_ than in heavy trees or bush cover, it is not an easy bird to find, and still less easy 
to bring to bag when once found. One imagines that such a magnificent bird must 
be extremely conspicuous wherever found, but such is by no means the case, and I 
have more than once stared at a motionless bird some seconds before I could: make 
it out. The stunted and thinly foliaged oaks, which are scattered about at some 
distance from each other, give such a queer dappling of light and shade under the 
blazing Indian sun that the outline of even glaring white objects cannot be made 
out at once, and the broken black and white of the pheasant’s back assimilates well 
with the waving grass and the shivering, broken shadows of the oak-leaves. 
Every breath of wind which stirs grass and leaves alters your view, and it is not 
until the bird rushes headlong away in the open, or skulks, head and tail down like 
some wild beast, into the nearest raspberry tangle, that you grasp the fact that you 
have let a pheasant get away. 
‘“‘Of-course, once they are on the wing they can be seen and heard from a great 
distance, but even under these circumstances I have been sometimes so struck with 
their beauty that I have failed to fire until too late. 
“One of my first encounters with these birds was when, working over the crest 
of a grass ridge with my Sepoys, we suddenly put up a covey of full-grown birds, 
and I was so fully occupied in watching these streaks of silver loveliness that I omitted 
to fire at all, and the whole lot—I think there were seven or eight—disappeared 
unharmed down the hill into a ravine with trees and dense undergrowth. 
“Often we used to hear these pheasants moving in front of us as our scouts 
worked through the grass on either side of our track. The main body of our men were 
following, but we very seldom put them up within sight. When we were working 
uphill they continued to run ahead of us until they had crossed the ridge or crest 
of the hill to our front, and then, when out of sight, they took to wing with much 
fluster and noise. 
“We noticed they always ran uphill and flew down, and always seemed to make 
for the highest point in the vicinity before taking to flight. 
“As, on the occasion of which I just wrote, we several times came on conveys 
of full-grown cock birds without a single hen anywhere near that we could see, it 
may have been that the hens skulked away on foot, but I think not, for the sound 
of the running birds could be followed very clearly when the grass and fallen leaves 
were dry and rustly. 
“They crowed much like the common English pheasant, but a shorter, deeper 
sound. I never saw them crowing, but more than once put up cock birds from 
spots where I had heard a vigorous crowing and flapping of wings going on the 
moment before.” 
DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
ApuLT Marz.—Top of the head and long nuchal crest black, strongly glossed 
with purplish blue; the crest is flowing, disintegrated and directed backward; it 
measures sometimes 100 to 110 mm. in length; the length and disintegration is 
due, not to the elongation and degeneration of barbules on many barbs, but to the 
