They call me the Golden Pheasant, because I have a golden crest. It is
like a king's crown. Don't you think my dress is beautiful enough for a
king?
See the large ruff around my neck. I can raise and lower it as I please.
I am a very large bird. I am fourteen inches tall and twenty-eight
inches long. I can step right over your little robins and meadow larks
and blue jays and not touch them.
Sometimes people get some of our eggs and put them under an old hen. By
and by little pheasants hatch out, and the hen is very good to them. She
watches over them and feeds them, but they do not wish to stay with her;
they like their wild life. If they are not well fed they will fly away.
I have a wife. Her feathers are beginning to grow like mine. In a few
years she will look as I do. We like to have our nests by a fallen
tree.
* * *
The well-known Chinese Pheasant, which we have named the Golden
Pheasant, as well as its more sober-colored cousin, the Silver Pheasant,
has its home in Eastern Asia.
China is pre-eminently the land of Pheasants; for, besides those just
mentioned, several other species of the same family are found there.
Japan comes next to China as a pheasant country and there are some in
India.
In China the Golden Pheasant is a great favorite, not only for its
splendid plumage and elegant form, but for the excellence of its flesh,
which is said to surpass even that of the common pheasant. It has been
introduced into Europe, but is fitted only for the aviary.
For purposes of the table it is not likely to come into general use, as
there are great difficulties in the way of breeding it in sufficient
numbers, and one feels a natural repugnance to the killing of so
beautiful a bird for the sake of eating it. The magnificent colors
belong only to the male, the female being reddish brown, spotted and
marked with a darker hue. The tail of the female is short. The statement
is made, however, that some hens kept for six years by Lady Essex
gradually assumed an attire like that of the males.
Fly-fishers highly esteem the crest and feathers on the back of the neck
of the male, as many of the artificial baits owe their chief beauty to
the Golden Pheasant.
According to Latham, it is called by the Chinese Keuki, or Keukee, a
word which means gold flower fowl.
* * *
"A merry welcome to thee, glittering bird!
Lover of summer flowers and sunny things!
A night hath passed since my young buds have heard
The music of thy rainbow-colored wings--
Wings that flash spangles out where'er they quiver,
Like sunlight rushing o'er a river."
[Illustration: GOLDEN PHEASANT.]