326 
OBSERVATIONS ON 
HYBRID PHEASANT. 
Lord Stawell sent me from the great lodge in the Holt a 
curious bird for my inspection. It was found by the 
spaniels of one of his keepers in a coppice^ and shot on the 
wing. The shape, and air, and habit of the bird, and the 
scarlet ring round the eyes, agreed well with the appearance 
of a cock pheasant : but then the head and neck, and breast 
and belly, were of a glossy black : and though it weighed 
three pounds three ounces and a half,^ the weight of a large 
full-grown cock pheasant, yet there were no signs of any 
spurs on the legs, as is usual with all grown cock pheasants, 
who have long ones. The legs and feet were naked of 
feathers ; and therefore it could be nothing of the grouse 
kind. In the tail were no long bending feathers, such as 
cock pheasants usually have, and are characteristic of the 
sex. The tail was much shorter than the tail of a hen 
pheasant, and blunt and square at the end. The back, 
wing-feathers, and tail, were all of a pale russet, curiously 
streaked, somewhat like the upper parts of a hen partridge. 
I returned it with my verdict, that it was probably a spurious 
or hybrid hen bird, bred between a cock pheasant and some 
domestic fowl. When I came to talk with the keeper who 
brought it, he told me that some pea-hens had been known 
last summer to haunt the coppices and coverts where this 
mule was found, 
]\Ir. Elmer, of Farnham, the famous game painter, waa 
employed to take an exact copy of this curious bird.""^ 
tered, and ran tumbling along just before the dog's nose till she had 
drawn him to a considerable distance, when she took wing and flew still 
farther off, bat not out of the field : on this the dog returned to me, near 
which place the young ones lay concealed in the grass, which the old 
bird no sooner perceived than she flew back again to us, settled just 
before the dog's nose again, and by rolling and tumbling about drew ofl" 
his attention from her young, and thus preserved her brood a second 
time. I have also seen, when a kite has been hovering over a covey of 
young partridges, the old birds fly up at the bird of prey, screaming and 
fighting with all their might to preserve their brood. — Markwick. 
••^ Hen pheasants usually weigh only two pounds ten ounces. — G. ^V. 
2 The picture was subsequently presented to Gilbert AVhite by Lord 
Stawell. See Jesse's " Gleanings," second scries, p. 159. — Ed. 
