nnaeus albicristatus_) may
occasionally be seen in the vicinity of a village.

The bird does not come up to the Englishman's ideal of a pheasant.
The bushy tail causes it to look rather like a product of the farmyard.
The cock is over two feet in length, the hen is five inches shorter.
The plumage of the former is dark brown, tinged with blue, each feather
having a pale margin. The rump is white with broad black bars. The
hen is uniformly brown, each feather having a narrow buff margin.
Both sexes rejoice in a long backwardly-directed crest and a patch
of bare crimson skin round each eye. The tail is much shorter and
more bushy than that of the English pheasant. The crest is white in
the cock and reddish yellow in the hen. Baldwin describes the call
of this pheasant as "a sharp _twut_, _twut_, _twut_. Sometimes very
low, with a pause between each note, then suddenly increasing loudly
and excitedly."

The kalij usually affords rather poor sport.

The koklas pheasant (_Pucrasia macrolopha_) is another short-tailed
species; but it is more game-like in appearance than the kalij and
provides better sport.

It may be distinguished from the kalij by its not having the red patch
of skin round the eye. The cock of this species has a curious crest,
the middle portion of which is short and of a fawn colour; on each
side of this is a long lateral tuft coloured black with a green gloss.
The cry of this bird has been syllabised as _kok-kok-pokrass_.

In the cheer-pheasant (_Catreus wellichi_) both sexes have a long
crest, like that of the kalij, and a red patch of skin round the eye.
The tail of this species, however, is long and attenuated like that
of the English pheasant, measuring nearly two feet. Wilson says, of
the call of this bird: "Both males and females often crow at daybreak
and dusk and, in cloudy weather, sometimes during the day. The crow
is loud and singular, and, when there is nothing to interrupt, the
sound may be heard for at least a mile. It is something like the words
_chir-a-pir_, _chir-a-pir_, _chir-a-pir_, _chirwa_, _chirwa_, but
a good deal varied."

The grey quail (_Coturnix communis_) is a common bird of the Himalayas
during a few days only in the year. Large numbers of these birds rest
in the fields of ripening grain in the course of their long migratory
flight. Almost as regularly as clockwork do they appear in the Western
Himalayas early in October on their way south, and again in April
on their n