BORNEAN CRESTLESS FIREBACK in 



While the pair of Firebacks kept close together, they apparently had no great 

 affection for one another, and not only occasionally pecked peevishly at each other, but 

 twice backed away and made half-hearted cuts with their spurs. 



In the jungle we are certain, sooner or later, to hear a loud woof I woof I woof I 

 woof I and a great black hornbull rushes over. It alights a little distance away, and we 

 hear the most amazing outcry of complaining creaks and rasping whines. It is, perhaps, 

 Madame H. in her mud-guarded hollow tree, scolding her husband for a belated ddjeuner 

 of berries ! 



A few subdued crashes announce other actors, and a troop of gibbons swings up. 

 Their method of progress is the very poetry of monkey travel, hand over hand, each 

 .swing furnishing momentum for the next. Then a sudden stop, and a long thin arm 

 or leg reaches out and draws in some fruit or berry. A round dark face peers down, a 

 mother slaps her whining baby clinging to her fur, and the troop is off, almost 

 noiselessly, except when one lands with a crash after a leap of twenty feet from one tree 

 to another. 



Then a great zebra civet passes close to us with squirrel-like leaps and sudden 

 rushes. As one sits quietly, birds pass or alight near by every minute or two. In an 

 island as large as Borneo, which contains no fewer than five hundred and fifty-five 

 species of birds, the variety which is seen day after day is bewildering. One can never 

 be sure what will be the next to appear. A certain species may alight close by, fly off 

 and never be seen again. Others may be observed frequently in many different places. 



I have spent a week searching unceasingly for Crestless Firebacks and neither 

 heard a note nor seen a feather. I have squatted in a most unlikely spot, with my back 

 against the great buttressed base of a mighty tree, and had two females come into view 

 almost at once and remain for ten minutes. Not only this, but on the following day 

 these same birds were in the same place at the corresponding hour. Such perversity of 

 fate or luck governs the observation of rare pheasants ! 



The natives trap these birds whenever possible, but only once have I seen their 

 feathers in head-dresses, and it was seldom that a Dyak could recognize a picture of one, 

 while the delineation of a crested fireback, argus, or white-tail wrought him to a 

 high pitch of enthusiasm at once. Their nest, eggs, and young still remain a mystery. 

 Unlike their Malayan brethren, I never found them near the Dyaks' communal homes, 

 but merely by accident in the depth of the jungle. 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male. — Crown very dark brown, sometimes with whitish shafts ; chin and 

 throat paler brown. A small patch of bright steel-blue on the nape. Neck blue-grey 

 all around, paler on the sides and beneath, where the shafts are shining white. Mantle 

 black, very finely vermiculated with bluish-grey, with shining white shafts. Back and 

 wings glossy steel-blue, more sparsely vermiculated, the markings becoming more or 

 less concentric grey lines on the larger coverts and outer webs of the secondaries. 

 Primaries plain dull brown. 



Lower back iridescent golden bronze. Posteriorly this changes suddenly into rich 

 dark shining maroon, and this almost at once into the dark steel-blue of the remaining 



