IJIMA'S COPPER PHEASANT 



Syrmatictis soemmerringi ijimae (Dresser) 



Names. — Specific : ijimae, named in honour of Prof. Ijima, Professor of Zoology in Tokyo University. 

 English : Ijima's or Kiusiu Copper Pheasant ; White-backed Satin Pheasant. Native : Koshijiro-yamadori 

 (White-rumped Mountain Bird, Japanese). 



Brief Description. — Male : Similar to soemmerringi, but with the lower back, rump, and a lateral line 

 along the sides more or less pure white. This concentration of white leaves most of the remaining plumage dark 

 chestnut with a metallic fringe. Female : Like the other forms, but more buffy in general tone and without bars 

 on the central tail-feathers. 



Range.— The southern part of Kiusiu Island, Japan, in the provinces of Osumi, Hyuga and Satsuma. 



THE BIRD IN ITS HAUNTS 



One day in early spring I leave my quaint little Japanese hotel and wend my way 

 slowly through the narrow streets and lanes of Kagoshima. I pass the early opened 

 markets, with their long strings of pitiful thousands of '' heodoris "■— the merest fluffs 

 of feathers— for sale at two sen each. At the last house on the road, after I leave the 

 city behind, from a rough bamboo cage comes the sweet, half-broken song of one of 

 these birds— a beautiful medley of notes as of our wood thrush and robin combined. 

 Steady walking soon brings me beyond the last house, and almost at once I begin to 

 climb, first rolling slopes, then steeper, more precipitous ridges. Between are narrow 

 valleys opening into beautiful vistas of distant terraced rice-fields. Now and then, as I 

 cross a low-hanging terrace, a small flock of thrushes dashes up from the fields, or a 

 wagtail runs swiftly over the newly turned sods. As I climb upward I begin to look 

 down upon the flat-raked, clean-swept bottom lands, every inch made a part of the 

 eternal rice-field checker board. Little terraces are scraped out and banked against 

 even the steep slopes up which I am clambering. Finally I reach a place where a 

 mere hand's-breadth of soil is lodged behind a cup-shaped boulder, and in this diminutive 

 field three heads of rice are sprouting ; typical of the minuteness, the thoroughness, of 

 the whole nation. 



The most beautiful spots beloved by the White-rumped Satin Pheasant are also 

 the rarest. Usually they are preserved only because of the regard for some ancestral 

 shade whose body lies buried near by. Here we find a carpet of ferns, bracken, 

 and soft bamboo grass ; then a mid-growth of graceful camellias— the tsubaki of 

 the Japanese— whose myriad scarlet bell flowers sway in the wind, their clapper 

 stamens muffled with knobs of yellow pollen. Pheasants will feed upon these petals 

 when they fall to the ground. High above all rises the great evergreen expanse of 

 camphor trees— in grace and size rivalling any grove of oaks. Their majestic trunks 

 are thickly coated with moss on the northern side, and the green is picked out with 

 the light-green rounded leaflets of an omnipresent clinging vine. 



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