Evelyn Sprawson—1936 and 1937



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than its near relative, the Golden, which we bred over several years in

the past, and which is nothing like so murderous. However, all the

eggs we had were fertile, and several were reared. This year we tried

keeping the cock Amherst in an adjacent aviary with only a wire

partition having a door in it separating him from the hens, so that he

could see them and display to them, and letting in each hen as she

started laying ; even so, he severely damaged one, and nearly massacred

another. However, in spite of the mess of wounds, blood, and feathers

he made of the second hen, she has recovered, and is now nearing

perfection as her moult progresses. Truly Kipling’s dictum concerning

“ the female of the species ” is not true of Amhersts. Perhaps all

cock Amhersts do not behave in so murderous a manner. I should be

interested to hear.


Satyr Tragopans (Tragopan satyra ).—With a young male we had

bred ourselves three years before and an imported hen we (last year)

had five eggs only, four hatched, though one had to be helped out and—

as always happens in these circumstances—died. The other three did

excellently till some six or seven weeks old, when at a very wet period

they got “ gapes ”, which I am ashamed to say I did not recognize

till too late, and we lost them. Unfortunately we lost the adult cock

in the autumn and, as we could only get an immature (1936) male, we

have only had infertile eggs this year. We had not experienced

“ gapes ” before—I may say I do not think the complaint is well

named, the birds coughed or sneezed (as also with some bantam chicks

at the same time), and it was only when I did a post mortem on one,

and found the Syngamus trachealis, that I realized what it was. We

then tried our President’s treatment, and it acts extremely well, though

not in the quick manner in which it acted on his Starling, but taking

several days and several doses, in isolation, of course.


Just a note about the Tragopan’s display. It is certainly not all

done as display to the hen. I have many times seen the male at the

breeding season, when a Blackbird or Sparrow (I have seen him do it

to both) has flown down near one end of his enclosure, run the whole

length of his enclosure—about 12 yards—and do a display before

them, presumably with the idea of frightening them off, but they took

no notice. The display included the erection of the horns and the



