256 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



A. Male, adult. — Fifty-two termites, i black ant, i small hemipterous insect, 6 seed 



cases oi Hyptis sp., and many berries and leaves of the widespread Lantana 

 mixta. 



B. Male, adult. — Several hundred termites, 6 black ants, i mosquito, 2 small 



spiders, i green coleopterous grub, 15 seed pods of the ground pea, several 

 hundred seeds of weeds, chiefly a harsh spiny grass, Rottbadia sp. 



C. Male, juvenile. — Forty-eight termites, many leaves and small white flowers and 



several hundred seeds of weeds and grass {Rottbadia). 



D. Female, adult. About 200 termites, 34 large black ants, i coccinellid beetle ; 



the juice of cactus fruit, many good-sized pieces of tapioca root from the 

 whittlings of a native woman in a field. 



As in the coastal district of Ceylon, the flora of this part of Java was, in a sense, 

 a false one, the Hyptis and the cacti, forming such dominant characters, being both 

 introduced by mankind from South America. The aromatic character of both the 

 Hyptis and Lantana not only scented the air when one pressed into a thicket and 

 bruised some of the leaves, but was transferred to the flesh of some of the individual 

 Junglefowls, adding a not unpleasant natural spice. An abundant source of food was 

 the fruit of the cactus. The blossom of this imported plant was pale lemon yellow 

 with a tinge of orange, but the succeeding fruit or ''prickly pear" was stout and rose- 

 red, containing a very juicy pulp of the same colour. I have shot more than one bird 

 whose bill, forehead, nostrils and chin were stained red from the juice of this fruit. 



Besides the above detailed examples I have found representatives of every principal 

 order of insects in the crops of these birds, in addition to the remains of many 

 marine or littoral creatures such as small crabs, shrimps and mollusks. 



The roosting habits of the Junglefowl were of great interest, and I spent consider- 

 able time in tracing out the various places where the birds spent the night. I found 

 three separate roosts on low branches in a mass of cacti and other thorny plants, where 

 one or more birds sought safety from nocturnal enemies. Another bird, or perhaps a 

 pair, as the sign seemed to indicate, roosted on a low, sweeping bamboo which had been 

 bent far over, near the foot of a cliff, and partly shielded from above by a dense growth 

 of grass which sprouted from its precarious hold in a niche of the clifl" side. 



I have already alluded to the strange introduction which I had to this bird, the 

 sight of three— two cocks and a hen— flying straight to sea for some seventy-five yards 

 to an isolated mangrove islet. It may be that this habit was the result of the birds 

 being once driven offshore by some sudden danger at low tide. I noticed that in the case 

 of both these and other individuals, much time was spent about the tidal pools search- 

 for small organisms. At low tide half the distance to the island became bridged by 

 bare coral reefs, so that if the birds first found their way to the mangrove islet at low tide 

 they would have had much less distance to fly than when I saw them at sunset taking 

 off from the very edge of the shore itself. It was the more remarkable that all three 

 birds were young of the year, evidently of the same brood, whose wing-feathers were 

 still in moult. This I ascertained by examination of one of the cocks. The other birds 

 were not disturbed by the loss of their fellow, and continued to fly out as usual night 

 after night. 



