BORNEAN CRESTED FIREBACK 137 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male.— Feathered parts of the head, with the exception of the crest, very 

 dark dull brown. Crest composed of a number of feathers, each showing a dense tuft 

 of long, loose terminal barbs at the end of an elongated bare shaft. The neck plumage 

 is also loose and rather disintegrated, and, like the crest, is strongly glossed with 

 steel-blue. The breast, mantle, scapulars, wing-coverts, inner secondaries and upper 

 tail-coverts are dull black on the basal portion, and strongly glossed with metallic 

 purplish-blue over the distal part of the feathers. Most of the feathers of the dorsal 

 plumage show a more or less distinct terminal fringe with steel-blue sheen, this 

 character being especially marked on the upper tail-coverts, where the fringe is quite 

 long and disintegrated. When a single upper covert is examined, the loose terminal 

 fringe seems to be separated from the main proximal part of the feather by a narrow, 

 velvety black line. Manipulation, however, shows that this is merely an optical effect 

 caused by a changed incidence and refraction of the rays of light. This results from 

 a sharp upward bend in the vane as a whole — a narrow transverse wrinkle clearly 

 evident both to the sight and touch. Posterior to this bend the feather is normal, 

 closely connected into a solid vane. That portion of the barbs forming the fringe, 

 from near the bend to the tip of the feather, while possessing the usual number of 

 barbules, are wholly without barbicels, the barbs thus standing apart in the loose 

 detached fashion so characteristic of this portion of the feather in many pheasants. 



Back and rump fiery metallic coppery bronze, decidedly darker than in the Malayan 

 bird, more red than golden. Examining a typical feather from the lower back we 

 find it measures about 80 mm. in length. Of this forty, or a little over half, consists 

 of the basal disintegrated grey down. Then the contour portion begins abruptly, a 

 zone of some 20 mm. dark brown changing to black, the distal portion glossed with 

 steel-blue. The terminal 20 mm. is divided into a shorter portion of dark, dull maroon, 

 giving place abruptly to the long (7 mm.) fringe of glowing bronze red. There is no 

 trace of the post-fimbrice wrinkle. Proceeding outward, the secondaries lose first the 

 bluish gloss, and then change from dull dead black to dark brown. The primaries 

 are still paler, sooty brown. The two inner pairs of tail-feathers and the inner web 

 and tip of the third are clear rich dark buff. The bases of these inner feathers are 

 dusky, and all the remaining rectrices are unglossed dead black. 



Beneath, the purplish-blue breast zone ends abruptly, and the entire lower breast, 

 abdomen, sides and flanks are of the same fiery metallic bronze red as the back, except 

 lighter. In extremely coloured individuals the feathers of this entire area lack black 

 pigment, the main portion of the vane being dark chestnut. Usually, however, the 

 feathers down the mid-line are at least half black, and variations of this colour may 

 be found up to where the chestnut and metallic red colour is confined to flank patches. 

 I collected one specimen of this extreme variation in the hinterland of Sarawak. The 

 amount of black pigment present in these ventral feathers is wholly individual In 

 two male birds from the same set of eggs, hatched and reared by their mother, at the 

 moult into the first-year plumage, one showed solid chestnut on the posterior ventral 

 surface with only extreme basal black mottling; the other had only the margins 

 chestnut — comparable in extent with the white margins on the ventral plumage of the 



VOL. II ■ T 



