132 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
bird, together with the fact that the general fauna of Banka is wholly Sumatran 
and not Bornean. 
Such being the case, we can readily conceive of the possibility of hybridization 
taking place either in birds kept captive by natives or as a result of a stray bird 
finding its way into Sumatra and crossing with the indigenous 7wz/a. ‘This offers an 
alternative explanation of such aberrant specimens as have given rise to the various 
discussions as to the number of species in this group such as Bittikofer’s smatrana. 
From my own observations I am satisfied that they may all be resolved into 
variations of one or the other of the two closely related species rufa and Zgnita. 
GENERAL ACCOUNT 
I spent some time in and near the Dyak graveyard, which I have mentioned in 
the bird in its haunts, and concentrated my attention on the family of Crested Firebacks 
which there made their home. On the third day I saw them together and missed one 
of the young males. The following day I stumbled by accident upon a few remaining 
bones, including a leg and many feathers of this very bird, close to the bank of the 
river. Of course it was impossible to tell the cause of death. A host of little workers 
struggling with the last remaining tough tendons on the leg-bone, and two well-worn 
paths to a near-by nest, showed that at least the ants had profited by this windfall. 
Apart from this, tragedy did not visit the pheasants during the week or two during 
which I watched them. 
They roosted together in a tree of medium size, heavily draped with hanging vines 
and surrounded by dense bamboo thickets. Once only was I able to see their forms 
dimly silhouetted against the sky. Three were perched close together, the others 
somewhat scattered. Early in the morning—how early I never learned—they left their 
roost and went towards the river, at least I found them riverwards on three separate 
occasions early in the forenoon. From the tracks I learned that they had no regular 
route, but sometimes followed the gravelled rivulet, or again went through the marshy 
forest on either side. Concerning their forenoon occupations I could obtain no 
information, although I should say that they fed and scratched near or along the 
river bank. 
During the heat of midday, twice they returned to the shelter of the bamboo 
undergrowth near their roost, once they remained quietly in the shade of a tree on 
the very bank of the river, and this, while several Dyaks were working on a canoe 
in full sight, but some distance up-river on the opposite sandbank. On the other 
days they evaded all my efforts to find them. I had chosen my look-out wisely, 
although it was the general jungle life which came to the river that I had hoped. to 
see, and the pheasants came rather as a surprise. A thick snarl of grape-like vines 
had grown entangled among the branches of a stout tree, and with a little cutting 
and arranging I was able to lie outstretched well above the high bank, partly over it 
and partly over the water itself. The shadow from the thick mesh of bare stems had 
discouraged the growth of foliage beneath, so that my view downward through the 
interstices was almost clear. Below me was a narrow cleft in the bank where the jungle 
rivulet trickled into the waters of the river. Bulbuls and purple butterflies amused 
