174 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



have always entered and left with a spring, making a clean leap over the dense growth 

 of undisturbed rushes which guarded the only entrance to the nest. 



This bird was indeed wary, and although a boy had constantly mounted guard over 

 the field in a hut not far away, she had never been detected. She had deliberately chosen 

 this site in the centre of a marshy paddy-field not far from constant human supervision. 

 This eliminated all danger of civet cats and other jungle vermin. She leaped over the 

 rushes at the entrance of her nest, thus leaving the nest wholly invisible and impene- 

 trable to a creature of low stature. She then turned sharply aside from the clump of 

 tall rushes, and pushing along for several yards beneath the grass tops, through a 

 tunnel shaped by the frequent pressure of her body, she entered a paddy-field trench 

 partly filled with water. Along this, as her tracks plainly showed, she walked for 

 about forty yards, then entered a second clump of dense growth and passed through 

 this before leaving it and running or flying to the edge of the jungle fifty yards or 

 more away. 



The nest was a late one, possibly a second one, the first perhaps having been 

 elsewhere and destroyed. The egg was fresh and stained from her feathers bedraggled 

 in the muddy trench. Had I not trod on the edge of the clump by accident a few days 

 before and flushed the bird I should never have discovered the nest. 



The breeding season of the Peafowl varies considerably with the latitude. In 

 northern India it breeds during the rains, and eggs have been recorded from June to 

 September, with August marking the height both of the rains and the breeding. In 

 Ceylon the birds breed from September to December. Eggs have been recorded from 

 Mysore in April, but this is unusually early. In the north the cock begins to moult 

 his train in September, and it is not full grown again until March or April. 



A month or more after this he begins calling regularly. Those which secure a 

 harem of several hens practically cease calling, or at least utter their cry only at long 

 intervals. But young cocks of two years of age are most persistent and apparently less 

 successful. Whether or not the hens are able to detect the evidence of immaturity in 

 their voices, I cannot say, but I have records of three separate individuals of this age, 

 all of which I eventually secured and which bore out the above assertion. Not only do 

 these and other ardent individuals call persistently in the morning and evening, but 

 their loud piercing wail can be heard at all hours, at midnight on moonlight nights, and 

 even in the scorching heat of midday. 



Once only have I seen a wild Peacock in display, and that for but a moment before 

 my presence was detected. It was in early morning and there were two hens present. 

 This exhibition is so common a sight among captive birds that our appreciation of its 

 beauty and interest is liable to suffer. While it is far from being the most complex 

 courtship among the gallinaceous birds, yet in variety of effort and in concentration of 

 effect it has no equal. Simultaneously the eye of the hen is engaged, by both colour 

 and movement, and her ear by both vocal and instrumental music. The enormously 

 elongated and multiplied tail-coverts are erected in a glorious curve, backed and 

 steadied by the erect and partly spread tail of dull normal feathers. This accomplished, 

 the bird walks slowly — or " struts," as the usual saying is — before the hen. When he 

 thinks a propitious moment has arrived he executes the climax, which is suddenly to 

 rush forward, and with a sudden shiver of his whole body to rustle his tail quills 



