64 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



At this stage the cock begins a nervous scratching of the ground, at first indefinite 

 and with hardly a glance to see if anything edible has been uncovered, but at a still 

 later stage he will provide himself with an insect or some other dainty, sometimes 

 holding it and following the hen quietly, without a sound. He then utters the low 

 content or brooding call several times, and this usually attracts the hen, who approaches. 

 Now is the time for the grand finale of the courtship display. When she is but two or 

 three feet away, he flings the bit of food toward her. Although I have seen this several 

 times, I am not sure that it is done intentionally, for the beginning of the full frontal 

 display is accompanied with several violent shakes of the head, perhaps to aid in the full 

 erection of the crest, and it may be that in the course of one of these involuntary jerks 

 the food is thrown to the ground. It is pleasant to think, however, that he actually 

 flings it down as a lure, to entice the object of his efforts within the zone of influence of 

 his hypnotic display. Simultaneously with the jerking of the head, the breast feathers 

 are puffed out and the bird leans forward, displaying every ocellus in a way which I 

 have never seen correctly depicted. The wrists are lowered until they practically rest 

 upon the ground, the primaries not spread, but pointing upward in the normal direction 

 as in the closed wing. The coverts, secondary and tertiary feathers are spread to the 

 utmost, the innermost joining across and concealing the plain back, and the outermost 

 touching the ground. The tail and the row of greater coverts are perfectly vertical, and 

 spread so that they form a complete half-circle, fanning out to within an inch or two of 

 the ground, the ocelli, even on the shorter feathers, showing clearly outside those of the 

 secondaries and wing-coverts. The most remarkable thing is the apparent independence 

 of motion existing between the primary and secondary feathers and their coverts. The 

 latter, even some of the shorter rows, splay out far beyond the closed primaries in a 

 manner which would never occur, nor even be thought possible, in the ordinaiy 

 spreading of a wing. 



The frontal type of courtship display is characteristic of the argus pheasants, 

 peacocks, tragopans and impeyans, but the relationship is evident only between the 

 present group and the argus. In the others it is probably a parallelism. 



CAPTIVITY 



As we have seen, the first record of a Grey Peacock Pheasant was based on a 

 bird living in captivity in England one hundred and seventy years ago. Since then 

 they have been kept and bred many times in captivity, both in zoological gardens 

 and in private aviaries. There are records of the age of thirty-nine individuals which 

 have lived in the London Zoo. The average length of life has been four years and 

 a half, while one pheasant' lived to the good old age of fifteen years. The length 

 of the period of incubation is twenty-one days. 



There is abundance of evidence that the normal complement of eggs in this, 

 and indeed in all other, species of Peacock Pheasants is two. In the files of the 

 " Bulletin Societe dAcclimatation " and elsewhere we find records of at least sixty 

 layings of these birds. Of these all consist of two eggs, except in one case, where a 

 single egg was deposited at the extremely early date of February 25th. I can add to 

 this about thirty additional records, including a half-dozen of my own, where two 



