BORNEAN PEACOCK PHEASANT 



Polyplectron schleiermacheri Briiggemann 



Names. — Specific : schleiermacheri^ after Herrn Schleiermacher, Director of the Hessian Museum. English : 

 Bornean Peacock Pheasant. 



Type. — Locality: Moera Teweh, South-east Borneo, Describer : Briiggemann. Place of Description : Abh. 

 nat. Vereina zu Brehm, V. 1877, p. 461, pi. IX. Location of Type: One in British Museum, one in Darmstadt 

 Museum. 



Brief Description. — Male : Most closely related to the Malayan Peacock Pheasant. The crest is not so 

 long, and the violet frill around the hind-neck somewhat longer and more brilliantly coloured, and there are 

 metallic golden-green spots on the sides of the neck and breast. The dorsal eye-spots are bluish green. Under- 

 parts black, speckled with buff; centre of neck, breast and abdomen white. The ocelli of the tail-coverts and 

 central rectrices touch, but do not merge. Female : Differs hardly at all from the female of the Malay bird. It 

 sometimes lacks the eye-spots on the upper tail-coverts, and the dorsal ocelli usually show a greater amount of 

 gloss. The ventral plumage is decidedly darker than in malaccensis. 



Range. — Borneo ; in the northern, central, and south-eastern parts. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



The first skins of this species were collected by Dr. G. Fischer at Moera Teweh, in 

 the interior of south-east Borneo, and sent to the Museum at Darmstadt. They were 

 named by Dr. F. Briiggemann in honour " des hochverdienten Directors der Gross- 

 herzoglich Hessischen Museen, des Herrn Minister Schleiermacher." The type is now 

 in Darmstadt in the Grand-Ducal Naturalien-Sammlung. Besides the type locality in 

 south-east Borneo, Everett has recorded it from Paitan, North Borneo, and I am able to 

 add a new locality, Central Sarawak, well up toward the Dutch border. A Dyak one day 

 brought me a handful of feathers, including several of the tail of this species, and said he 

 had trapped it two days upstream. One of my men was just leaving to get argus, so as 

 not to disturb those in my vicinity which I wished to observe, and he took this man as 

 guide. When they revisited the trap, they found an argus which had been eaten by a 

 civet cat, but by careful search among the leaves a number of additional Polyplectron 

 feathers were found, thus confirming what the Dyak had said. I could obtain no reliable 

 information about them, and the bird seemed almost unknown to these savages. As they 

 had separate names for all the other pheasants, and were familiar with their haunts and 

 habits, this species must be exceedingly uncommon for them to be so ill-acquainted 

 with it. 



This Bornean Peacock Pheasant is quite closely related to the Malayan and 

 Sumatran malaccensis, differing in having a number of the characters more highly 

 specialized. 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male. — There is no isolated, elongated crest, but the entire plumage of the 

 forehead, crown and nape is recurved, so that it stands fairly erect. Throughout this 

 area the feathers are strongly glossed with green, with enough of white to give a 



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