BLACK-BREASTED KALEEGE 
Gennaeus horsfieldi (Gray) 
NAMES.—Specific: orsfieldi, named for Dr. Thomas Horsfield, an English naturalist, who carried on 
scientific work in the East. English: Black-breasted, Purple or Horsfield’s Kaleege. French: Faisan huppifére 
de Horsfield ; Houppifére pourpré. German: Stahlblaues Fasanhuhn. Native: Dooreek (Dibrugarh) ; Durug, 
Dirrik (Garo Hills); Motoora (Khasi, Sylhet); Muthura (Chittagong). 
BRIEF DESCRIPTION.—Male: Entire plumage black, glossed with purplish or steel-blue; the feathers of 
the lower back, rump and upper tail-coverts margined with white; the lower plumage only slightly pointed. 
Female: Olive-brown ; tip of crest rufous; chin and throat whitish ; wings and ventral plumage tipped with paler 
brown ; central tail-feathers deep ferruginous ; in general more rufescent than the other Himalayan Kaleege. 
RANGE.—Eastern Bhutan, Assam and Upper Burma. 
THE BIRD IN ITS HAUNTS 
My first experience with this bird in Burma, east of the Irrawaddy, was most 
interesting. We were encamped near the small Shan village of Wau-hsaung, at the 
foot of the mountains, which rose range beyond range eastward until they culminated 
at the Chinese frontier, forty miles away. 
The banks of the Namli River were covered with dense undergrowth, through 
which the great spreading horns of many water buffaloes had worn a maze of trails. 
The clumps of bamboo had been browzed back until they had taken the form of huge 
umbrellas. The rains had not yet ceased, and butterflies in scores of species and 
individuals filled the forest and the narrow lanes. 
In a slight mist I walked a hundred yards into the undergrowth, bending low to 
accommodate myself to the buffalo tunnel trails. Not far from the stream I found 
a flock of small birds, several species of babblers, silver-eared mesias, yellow-backed 
sunbirds and a single scarlet minivet, flashing like a flame against the dark leaves. 
I shot a gorgeous sultan-bird, and was wrapping it up when there came to my ears, 
like an electric shock, the inimitable bubbling murmur and cackle of a kaleege 
pheasant. I sank down upon the mud, and found that the sound came from the steep, 
thicket-covered bank leading down to a slimy backwater of the stream. 
The note of these birds is one of the few in nature which sounds distant when 
uttered close by, and besides raising and cocking my gun I dared not move. I greatly 
desired a specimen, to see if the birds from this comparatively low elevation possessed 
any of the remarkable variability of those higher and farther east. 
Five minutes passed, and no further sound came from the birds. A family of 
babblers passed, fortunately without discovering me; a big green barbet began his 
rolling, croaking song overhead, and a pair of pygmy falcons, swallow-like in size 
and colour, perched on a slanting bamboo and caught butterflies and grasshoppers. 
A flurry of rain and a gust of wind sent down leaves and twigs, and filled the air 
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