CHINESE SILVER KALEEGE 
Gennaeus nycthemerus (Linnaeus) 
NAMES.—Specific : mycthemerus, from Greek yvy), stem of vvé, night and #yéoa day, an apt simile in the 
case of its jet black and pure white plumage. English: Silver Pheasant; Chinese Silver Kaleege ; French: 
Faisan argenté ; German: Silberfasan; Vernacular: Ing-ky (Silver fowl) ; Paé-ky (White fowl) Chinese. 
BRIEF DESCRIPTION.—Male: Top of the head, long, hairy crest and under parts black, glossed with 
purple; upper parts white, the feathers peppered, or on the wings lined, with four to six black, converging 
lines ; tail very long, centre feathers white, others with numerous oblique lines. Female: Crest blackish-brown; 
throat brownish-white; entire body plumage and central tail-feathers olive-brown, finely mottled with dusky 
lines ; outer tail-feathers black, with irregular oblique white and olive lines. 
RANGE.—South China, from central Yunnan east to Fokien. 
PLE SBIR TIN TiS  WikDs HOME 
Ir was the ides of March among the tumbled mountain ranges of Fokien. A 
week’s rain had freshened the landscape and swollen each bud and lichen, and under 
the heat of the midday sun the myriad lives in egg and chrysalid were stirring rest- 
lessly. When I left the river bank in early morning the wind blew cold, but after a 
climb of a thousand feet the sun’s warmth seemed that of midsummer. Although 
frost was almost unknown, yet the air was filled with springy odours, and to the 
eye Nature revealed herself as awakening after a long winter's sleep. 
The hills, ravines and mountains surrounded us, their steep, rounded outlines broken 
here and there by weathered cliffs of blackish rock. A soft coat of green covered 
the slopes, but nowhere were the dark spires of forest. Cultivation must be all but 
impossible here, but the hordes of yellow men of this and countless past generations 
had gleaned again and again, and left only sprouting pines and brushy bamboo. Grass 
was almost absent, its place taken everywhere by a low, coarse fern brake, covering 
densely every available inch from water’s edge to mountain top. 
I crouched and watched the south side of an open valley. Along the bottom 
flowed a quiet green stream; here and there were stubble-filled rice fieldlets, most 
of them of only a few yards extent. 
Two beautiful shrikes clung to a reed near by, and now and then flew into a 
clump of brush, searching for insect food like vireos. They were at last driven away 
by a flock of black mynas, which whirled down to the fields and began to feed. 
Now an interesting sequence of happenings delighted me. A flock of a dozen 
magpies was searching busily through the ferns on an overhanging bank. Occasionally 
one flew down and grubbed out a hollow with its beak among the newly-ploughed 
clods of a small rice terrace below. It dropped something into the hole and carefully 
covered it up before flying up again. After two or three magpies had repeated this, 
a hen Silver Kaleege walked slowly out into the field, followed by another hen and a 
63 
