108 THE GREY PEACOCK-PHEASANT. 



" From November to April these birds are found all over the 

 well-wooded parts of the district ; and during the rainy season 

 they retire to the dense forests and bamboo jungle to breed, and 

 at this season the call is never heard. 



" I have shot dozens of this bird, some of which had two 

 and three spurs, but in no case did I ever see more than four 

 on one leg-, and one peculiarity is. that they hardly ever have the 

 same number of spurs on each leg. The Kookies have an idea 

 that an additional spur grows every year, but during the five 

 years' experience I had of them, I never saw more than the 

 number mentioned above. The females have a corn on each 

 leg where the spur is in the male. 



" These birds go about in pairs generally, but on one occa- 

 sion, in December, while riding through a forest pathway, I 

 came across a party of four, one male and three females, the 

 latter easily distinguishable by their smaller size and duller 

 colours. 



" As a rule, these Pheasants are very shy and terrible runners 

 and skulks, and without a good dog it is impossible to secure a 

 winged bird. They are delicious eating. The Kookies and Dan- 

 ghar coolies in the Cachar tea gardens know this bird by the 

 name of " Paisa-walla-majur." The Kookies are very in- 

 genious in their methods of trapping birds ; the common spring- 

 trap, so well known at home, is universally used, and for securing 

 birds on their nests, where these are on the ground, the grass 

 conical basket, mentioned further on, is adopted, the green 

 ulu grass being used. The spring-traps are baited with a crim- 

 son seed, which is obtained from a forest tree." 



Darling reports that he " saw a great number of this Pheasant 

 in the Thowngyah Hills (Tenasserim)," and not unfrequently 

 in company with the Lineated Pheasant. 



" I generally noticed them," he says, " in parties of two, three, 

 or four, but once coming round a sharp corner, I stumbled 

 upon eight of them, employed in scratching up a lot of fresh 

 elephant's dung. 



" I only managed to procure a pair. The male I shot. Prow- 

 ling about the jungle in the morning for birds, I saw a dark object 

 scuttling through the bushes, and fired and picked up, to my great 

 delight, a fine male. The hen, I snared, and in rather a strange 

 way. I found three holes of the porcupine rat (of which I got 

 two specimens) communicating with one another ; the entrance 

 to one of these holes was nearly 3 feet in diameter and some 4 

 feet in depth, decreasing, as the hole deepened horizontally into 

 the hill side, to about 8 inches. I set a slip noose with a springer 

 in the small part of the hole. On looking next morning, 

 instead of, as I expected, finding the rat, there were only a 

 number of the feathers of a male of this species. I set the trap 

 again, and that evening got nothing ; next morning I found a 

 hen hanging by her legs in the trap. 



