100 THE ARGUS PHEASANT. 



" These cleared spaces are undoubtedly used as dancing grounds, 

 but personally I have never seen a bird dancing in them, but 

 have always found the proprietor either seated quietly in, or 

 moving backwards and forwards slowly about, them, calling at 

 short intervals, except in the morning and evening when they 

 roam about to feed and drink. The males are always to be 

 found at home, and they roost at night on some tree quite 

 close by. 



" They are the most difficult birds I know of to approach. A 

 male is heard calling, and you gradually follow up the sound, tak- 

 ing care not to make the slightest noise, till at last the bird calls 

 within a few yards of you, and is only hidden by the denseness 

 of the intervening foliage. You creep forward, hardly daring to 

 breathe, and suddenly emerge on the open space, but the space is 

 empty, the bird has either caught sight of or heard or smelt 

 you, and has run off quietly. They will never rise, even when 

 pursued by a dog, if they can possibly avoid it, but run very 

 swiftly away, always choosing the densest and most impene- 

 trable part of the forest to retreat through. When once the 

 cleared space is discovered, it is merely a work of a little 

 patience to secure the bird by trapping it. The easiest way is 

 to run a low fence of cut scrub round the spot, leaving four 

 openings just sufficiently wide to enable the bird to pass through, 

 and in these openings to place nooses fastened to the end of a 

 pliant sapling, which is bent and kept down by a catch. This 

 is the usual way, and the one I adopted to secure most of my 

 specimens, as I found it as difficult to shoot as it was easy to 

 trap them. The natives, however, have other ways of secur- 

 ing them, all dependent on taking advantage of the bird's 

 idiosyncracy about keeping its home clean. 



" One of these plans, which, though I have never actually seen 

 it in operation, is, I am informed, really practised, is as 

 follows: — A bit of bamboo, about 18 or 20 inches long, and a 

 quarter of an inch wide, is shaved down till it is the thickness 

 of writing paper, the edges being as sharp as a razor. This 

 narrow pliant piece ends in a stout sort of handle at one end, 

 6 or 8 inches long, which is driven firmly into the ground in 

 the middle of the cleared space. 



" The bird, in trying to remove it, scratches and pecks at it, 

 trying to dig it up, but finding all its efforts vain, it twists the 

 narrow pliant portion several times round its neck, and taking 

 hold of the bamboo near the ground with its bill, it gives a 

 sudden spring backwards to try to pull it up ; the consequence 

 is that its head is nearly severed from its body by the razor-like 

 edges of the bamboo. 



" Another method is to erect two small posts, about 4 feet 

 high and 3 feet apart, in the clearing, across the top of which 

 a bar is firmly fastened ; over this bar a string is run, by one 

 end of which a heavy block of wood is suspended just under 





