1 82 THE WHITE-CRESTED KALIJ. 



Colonel Tickell and other writers assert that the Kalij is poly- 

 gamous. This may be the case in some places, but I can only 

 say that hundreds of times in August and September I have 

 put up a pair with their young brood, and that from May to 

 October I have rarely found an old female without finding a 

 male somewhere near, and vice versa. 



In a wild state this Pheasant sometimes interbreeds with 

 other species. I myself shot a male which could only have been 

 a cross with a Koklass, and, what is still more surprising, Col. 

 Fisher writes : — "I once came across a bird of this species with 

 the head, neck, and crest of a Kalij, but the back and alternate 

 feathers of the tail most unmistakeably those of the Moonal. 

 I skinned the bird and made the specimen over to an English 

 Naturalist some 20 years ago." 



The Common Kalij breeds everywhere in the Himalayas, 

 south of the first snowy ranges (and occasionally in the 

 Dhuns and Tarais that fringe their bases and in the Siwaliks) 

 from the borders of Afghanistan to those of Nepal, 



I have found eggs in the Dhun as early as the 4th April, and 

 at Simla as late as the 20th June. They breed at all elevations 

 from the level of the Tarai (where it may be 1,200 feet above 

 the sea-level) up to fully 8,000 feet. 



They are not very particular as to choice of locality, but more 

 or less inhabited and thinly forest-clad tracts, with pretty 

 dense undergrowth, are usually chosen ; little densely-bushed 

 watercourses on the sides of hills, moderately thickly or some- 

 what thinly covered with oak and rhododendron forest, and in 

 the neighbourhood of fields, being much affected. 



The Common Kalij hardly forms a regular nest. It usually 

 gets together a sort of pad, sometimes rather massive, more 

 commonly very slight, of dead leaves, fine grass and coarse 

 moss-roots, mingled with a little grass or a few sprigs of 

 moss, and in a slight depression in the centre of this it 

 lays its eggs. One which I measured in situ in May 1871, 

 in the valley of the Sutlej just below Kotgarh, was circular, 

 1 1 -5 inches in diameter and 4 in thickness outside, with a 

 central depression 6 inches wide and nearly 2 inches in depth in 

 the centre. Others, again, have been mere linings to a slight 

 hollow in the ground, either natural or scratched by the birds ; 

 I have seen a great many nests of this species, and they were 

 generally very scanty. The nest is usually well concealed under 

 tufts of fern (they are very fond of fern-clad hill sides), grass, 

 or " ringal," as the natives call the slender dwarf hill-bamboos. 



I have never found more than nine eggs myself, but I have 

 had as many as thirteen brought me by natives, said to have 

 been found in one nest. As a rule, I do not think they lay more 

 than nine eggs, and certainly one rarely sees more than eight or 

 nine young birds with a pair of old ones. 



