CHINESE SILVER KALEEGE 



Gennaeus nycthernerus (Linnaeus) 



Names. — Specific : nycthemerus, from Greek vvid, stem of vv|, night and r\}doa day, an apt simile in the 

 case of its jet black and pure white plumage. English: Silver Pheasant; Chinese Silver Kaleege ; French: 

 Faisan argente ; German : Silberfasan ; Vernacular : Ing-ky (Silver fowl) ; Pa^-ky (White fowl) Chinese. 



Brief Description.— Male : Top of the head, long, hairy crest and under parts black, glossed with 

 purple ; upper parts white, the feathers peppered, or on the wings lined, with four to six black, converging 

 lines ; tail very long, centre feathers white, others with numerous oblique lines. Female : Crest blackish-brown ; 

 throat brownish-white ; entire body plumage and central tail-feathers olive-brown, finely mottled with dusky 

 lines ; outer tail-feathers black, with irregular oblique white and olive lines. 



Range. — South China, from central Yunnan east to Fokien. 



THE BIRD IN ITS WILD HOME 



It was the ides of March among the tumbled mountain ranges of Fokien. A 

 week's rain had freshened the landscape and swollen each bud and lichen, and under 

 the heat of the midday sun the myriad lives in ^gg and chrysalid were stirring rest- 

 lessly. When I left the river bank in early morning the wind blew cold, but after a 

 climb of a thousand feet the sun's warmth seemed that of midsummer. Although 

 frost was almost unknown, yet the air was filled with springy odours, and to the 

 eye Nature revealed herself as awakening after a long winter's sleep. 



The hills, ravines and mountains surrounded us, their steep, rounded outlines broken 

 here and there by weathered cliffs of blackish rock. A soft coat of green covered 

 the slopes, but nowhere were the dark spires of forest. Cultivation must be all but 

 impossible here, but the hordes of yellow men of this and countless past generations 

 had gleaned again and again, and left only sprouting pines and brushy bamboo. Grass 

 was almost absent, its place taken everywhere by a low, coarse fern brake, covering 

 densely every available inch from water's edge to mountain top. 



I crouched and watched the south side of an open valley. Along the bottom 

 flowed a quiet green stream ; here and there were stubble-filled rice fieldlets, most 

 of them of only a few yards extent. 



Two beautiful shrikes clung to a reed near by, and now and then flew into a 

 clump of brush, searching for insect food like vireos. They were at last driven away 

 by a flock of black mynas, which whirled down to the fields and began to feed. 



Now an interesting sequence of happenings delighted me. A flock of a dozen 

 magpies was searching busily through the ferns on an overhanging bank. Occasionally 

 one flew down and grubbed out a hollow with its beak among the newly-ploughed 

 clods of a small rice terrace below. It dropped something into the hole and carefully 

 covered it up before flying up again. After two or three magpies had repeated this, 

 a hen Silver Kaleege walked slowly out into the field, followed by another hen and a 



63 



