WILD KALEEGE HYBRIDS QI 
The first mention of this form appears in the ‘Calcutta Journal of Natural History” 
in 1842, where it was described as a hybrid between phastanus fasciatus and P. leucomelanos. 
Temminck, in the first edition of his Plauches Coloriees, distinguished it by the name of 
lophophorus cuvieri. Shortly after my tentative acceptance of this form as a sub-species 
in my 1914 review of the group, I realized that it was only another of the unusual types 
of wild hybrids, and Baker has independently come to the same conclusion. 
Passing over the wz//amsz stage we come, as we go southward, to the forms of 
which that named vafsez may be taken as an average. This hybrid may be said to show 
25% of horsfieldi and 75% of “meatus, and centres around the southern Arakan ranges. 
The white rump fringe is faint, but still distinct, and the dorsal vermiculations are only 
slightly fainter than those of /ézeafus. The outer webs of the central rectrices have 
got rid of much of their dark pigment, and are quite white. The female in both colour 
and pattern is thoroughly correlated with the stage of the male. 
Ogilvie-Grant first recognized this as a sub-species in 1893, and Baker still clings 
to it. But in one specimen of oafsez which I secured, there is the bilateral asymmetry 
which indicates hybridism, and /meatus has been shot farther north than any oafse7 thus 
far discovered. Less than a dozen specimens have been found, and they vary enough 
inter se to remove all doubt as to the true character of this one, among many forms. 
RIPPONI-SHARPEI-NYCTHEMERUS HYBRIDS IN THE FIELD 
My first meeting with any true silver kaleege was, as I have related, in Burma, 
some distance from the Yunnan frontier, when from a flock of much darker birds 
I shot one which belonged in the nxycthemerus-ripponi-rujipes group, but which was 
not wholly typical of any good species or named hybrid. After crossing the Yunnan 
border, when the last outlying English fort had been left behind, I found traces of an 
even whiter bird. These were in the form of stray feathers in the sprung dead-falls 
of the Kachin trappers. They belonged to birds which had been caught, but discovered 
and eaten by civet cats before the hillmen had had opportunity to go their rounds. 
Later I saw a flock of these birds and shot one, which was typical r7pfouz. On 
this occasion I was part way down the slope of a wild gorge, on a late afternoon in 
December. The mountains rose high on all sides except to the northward, where the 
long slopes dove-tailed one another, punctuated by two majestic peaks, and ending 
in the purple distance in the jagged ranges of the unexplored tri-corner of Tibet, 
Yunnan, and Burma. No huts were in sight, but from a side valley came faintly the 
weird, nameless mouthings of a tongueless Kachin cur. 
The hillside jungle showed a dozen shades of green, with here and there a blur of 
delicate pink, marking the unseasonable blossoming of a wild cherry tree. One close 
overhead radiated a hundred sprays of coral bloom, all ahum with insects drawn by 
the nectar, while the branches themselves trembled with the perchings of many fly- 
catchers, attracted in turn by the insects. 
Now a hoarse chorus came from a dense flock of parrakeets, and soon afterward 
the tremulous wing whirr of a kaleege. This sent me down at once on my knees 
among the scanty dwarf bamboo and everlastings, alert for another hint of the birds 
which I was seeking. A crash of leaves and twigs drew my attention to the right along 
