132 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



bird, together with the fact that the general fauna of Banka is wholly Sumatran 

 and not Bornean. 



Such being the case, we can readily conceive of the possibility of hybridization 

 taking place either in birds kept captive by natives or as a result of a stray bird 

 finding its way into Sumatra and crossing with the indigenous rufa. This offers an 

 alternative explanation of such aberrant specimens as have given rise to the various 

 discussions as to the number of species in this group such as Biittikofer's sumatrana. 

 From my own observations I am satisfied that they may all be resolved into 

 variations of one or the other of the two closely related species rufa and ignita. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



I spent some time in and near the Dyak graveyard, which I have mentioned in 

 the bird in its haunts, and concentrated my attention on the family of Crested Firebacks 

 which there made their home. On the third day I saw them together and missed one 

 of the young males. The following day I stumbled by accident upon a few remaining 

 bones, including a leg and many feathers of this very bird, close to the bank of the 

 river. Of course it was impossible to tell the cause of death. A host of little workers 

 struggling with the last remaining tough tendons on the leg-bone, and two well-worn 

 paths to a near-by nest, showed that at least the ants had profited by this windfall. 

 Apart from this, tragedy did not visit the pheasants during the week or two during 

 which I watched them. 



They roosted together in a tree of medium size, heavily draped with hanging vines 

 and surrounded by dense bamboo thickets. Once only was I able to see their forms 

 dimly silhouetted against the sky. Three were perched close together, the others 

 somewhat scattered. Early in the morning— how early I never learned— they left their 

 roost and went towards the river, at least I found them riverwards on three separate 

 occasions early in the forenoon. From the tracks I learned that they had no regular 

 route, but sometimes followed the gravelled rivulet, or again went through the marshy 

 forest on either side. Concerning their forenoon occupations I could obtain no 

 information, although I should say that they fed and scratched near or along the 

 river bank. 



During the heat of midday, twice they returned to the shelter of the bamboo 

 undergrowth near their roost, once they remained quietly in the shade of a tree on 

 the very bank of the river, and this, while several Dyaks were working on a canoe 

 in full sight, but some distance up-river on the opposite sandbank. On the other 

 days they evaded all my efforts to find them. I had chosen my look-out wisely, 

 although it was the general jungle life which came to the river that I had hoped to 

 see, and the pheasants came rather as a surprise. A thick snarl of grape-like vines 

 had grown entangled among the branches of a stout tree, and with a little cutting 

 and arranging I was able to lie outstretched well above the high bank, partly over it 

 and partly over the water itself. The shadow from the thick mesh of bare stems had 

 discouraged the growth of foliage beneath, so that my view downward through the 

 interstices was almost clear.* Below me was a narrow cleft in the bank where the jungle 

 rivulet trickled into the waters of the river. Bulbuls and purple butterflies amused 



