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 northward journey. By walking through the terraced fields at those times with a gun, considerable bags of quail can be secured. These birds migrate at night. Writing of them, Hume said: "One moonlight night about the third week in April, standing at the top of Benog, a few miles from Mussoorie, a dense cloud many hundred yards in length and fifty yards, I suppose, in breadth of small birds swept over me with the sound of a rushing wind. They were not, I believe, twenty yards above the level of my head, and their quite unmistakable call was uttered by several of those nearest me as they passed."