THE WHITE-CRESTED KALIJ. l8l 



manner often observes where the gun is posted, and then takes 

 wing in a safe direction. 



" The Kalij Pheasant, when alarmed, will generally fly down 

 the khad, and will often take along the side of the hill. Though 

 it will run, yet it will hardly everjfy up hill. Its speed when 

 well on the wing is amazing, greater frequently, I am certain, 

 than any rocketer out of an English cover. 



" When not bullied by the hill men, they will come close up 

 to the backs of villages, especially if there are fields of corn at 

 hand. I have shot them out of standing crops when the fields 

 are situated near the jungle." 



Referring to the whirring sound they make most commonly, 

 but not exclusively, in the breeding season, he says : — 



" We had been sitting motionless for, I suppose, half an hour, 

 when I was startled, all of a sudden, by the loud drumming 

 noise I have already described close at hand. The sound came 

 from behind, and on looking over my shoulder, my companion 

 with a smile pointed out the drummer. An old cock Kalij was 

 squatting on the stump of a fallen tree, and, with its feathers all 

 ruffled and tail spread, was causing this extraordinary sound by 

 rapidly beating its wings against its body." 



As regards this last, it is no doubt difficult to see how the bird 

 makes the peculiar sound referred to ; the wings are kept in 

 such rapid vibration that you can only see a haze, but I myself 

 think that the wings are not struck against the body, and that 

 the sound is merely caused by the extremely rapid movement 

 of the wings, through the tensely strung feathers of which the 

 air hurtles. 



Another writer notices a very characteristic habit this species 

 has, where a good deal shot at, of flying up, when disturbed, into 

 some tree, and there remaining perched motionless in some fork, 

 or dense patch of foliage, or upright against the trunk, so that 

 it is almost impossible to see it. You walk round and round, 

 you throw stones, but nothing appears ; suddenly some one 

 catches sight of it, that same instant it drops like a stone from 

 its perch always with the trunk between it and the gun, and is 

 off down the ravine without a single call or flutter, before 

 you even know that it has been sighted. 



Though Wilson does not notice it, they feed greedily on 

 grain, and my people at Kotgarh used to snare numbers 

 in the winter, by little heaps of grain laid in fields where 

 on previous mornings they had been noticed feeding. Mons. 

 Chauveau, Bishop of Sevastopol, but stationed at Ta-tsienlon, 

 on the Chinese and Tibetan frontier, tells us, that Lady 

 Amherst's Pheasants are there so wide awake that, on 

 discovering such a bait, they suspect a snare, and try to brush 

 away the grain with their immense long tails, and thus eat it in 

 safety. Our Theasants arc not quite so advanced in civilization 

 as these Chinese ones. 



