32 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
some unknown fairyland. Perched in a glow of sunlight almost within arm’s reach, the 
feathered atom was ablaze with metallic colour—from its beak to toe one’s eye registered 
green, maroon, olive, bright yellow, green and black, while its breast was of brightest 
lemon stained with crimson. A shuffling among the ferns drew my eyes away and 
slowly there lumbered past, seen dimly beyond one side of the glade, a half-grown bear. 
The black beast made no commotion, pushing quietly through the under-brush and 
soon: passing from view. When I looked back the sunbird, too, had vanished. Although 
the bear never crossed my path again, it was far different with the hen Kaleege, as I had 
occasion to discover a few days later. 
The rest of the afternoon passed quietly, although I once had a thrill when two deer 
came close to me and crossed the glade, with many stops for a nibble at fern-top or moss. 
One was rufous, one was brown, a sambur doe and nearly grown fawn. Their eyes were 
lustrous, and together with their ears and nostrils never for an instant ceased their 
vigilant watch for danger. I was hidden and above reach of scent, but not a rustle of 
squirrel or bird but was noticed, not a movement of shadow or quiver of mossy bough 
but was tested with sight and scent and hearing. Their life seemed one great fear—one 
never-ending watch for death. And here was I, the type of the most terrible of all their 
enemies, my gun ready, but with my mind far more murderously inclined towards any 
of my fellow men who could at such a time have shot them, than toward the wonderful 
creatures themselves. 
The most conspicuous and jolliest of the lesser tenants of this Kaleege jungle were 
golden-winged laughing thrushes, sturdy birds, clad in grey-striped browns, set off with 
patches of black, white and greenish gold. They were usually quiet vocally, but for ever 
making a great racket among the leaves and debris of the jungle floor. They worked in 
pairs, and from the sound of their progress might have been a whole flock or herd of 
creatures. Now and then they would leap to a low twig and burst into a rollicking duet 
—a sudden, startling mutual guffaw of loud, harsh notes. It seemed as out of place amid 
the quiet of these dim aisles as the antics of a clown in a cathedral. 
The setting sun found many loop-holes in the canopy of moss, and the glade became 
brighter than at midday, the long golden shafts reaching far in through the jungle, 
turning the moss to golden lacery and the ferns to yellow-green filigree. New bird 
voices came to my ears—two sad half-tones reiterated until they seemed to embody all 
the sorrow of the tragedies of the wilderness. The first call of the coming night silenced 
the voicing of the day’s sadness; the deep, gruff 400 ! Hoo/ of an owl presaging the still 
more terrible intimacy of life and death when the sunshine had gone. 
Some time later the whirr of wings drew my attention down vista, and there a pair 
of Black-backed Kaleege balanced on a low, swaying branch. For a brief space they 
conversed in undertones, each murmuring in the manner so characteristic of all this 
group of pheasants. The brown hen almost immediately scaled down to a mossy log, 
took as before a single comprehensive look about, and dropped down in the selfsame 
place among the ferns, going on to her eggs. 
The-cock bird ascended the maple sapling, branch after branch, and then crossed to 
an oak and continued to climb his arboreal ladder until he had almost reached the level 
of my eye. Walking out on a good-sized branch on the opposite side of the trunk he . 
stood for some minutes, looking down, behind, upward, in every direction, murmuring 
