BORNEAN CRESTED FIREBACK 137 
DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
ApuLT Ma.e.—Feathered parts of the head, with the exception of the crest, very 
dark dull brown. Crest composed of a number of feathers, each showing a dense tuft 
of long, loose terminal barbs at the end of an elongated bare shaft. The neck plumage 
is also loose and rather disintegrated, and, like the crest, is strongly glossed with 
steel-blue. The breast, mantle, scapulars, wing-coverts, inner secondaries and upper 
tail-coverts are dull black on the basal portion, and strongly glossed with metallic 
purplish-blue over the distal part of the feathers. Most of the feathers of the dorsal 
plumage show a more or less distinct terminal fringe with steel-blue sheen, this 
character being especially marked on the upper tail-coverts, where the fringe is quite 
long and disintegrated. When a single upper covert is examined, the loose terminal 
fringe seems to be separated from the main proximal part of the feather by a narrow, 
velvety black line. Manipulation, however, shows that this is merely an optical effect 
caused by a changed incidence and refraction of the rays of light. This results from 
a sharp upward bend in the vane as a whole—a narrow transverse wrinkle clearly 
evident both to the sight and touch. Posterior to this bend the feather is normal, 
closely connected into a solid vane. That portion of the barbs forming the fringe, 
from near the bend to the tip of the feather, while possessing the usual number of 
barbules, are wholly without barbicels, the barbs thus standing apart in the loose 
detached fashion so characteristic of this portion of the feather in many pheasants. 
Back and rump fiery metallic coppery bronze, decidedly darker than in the Malayan 
bird, more red than golden. Examining a typical feather from the lower back we 
find it measures about 80 mm. in length. Of this forty, or a little over half, consists 
of the basal disintegrated grey down. Then the contour portion begins abruptly, a 
zone of some 20 mm. dark brown changing to black, the distal portion glossed with 
steel-blue. The terminal 20 mm. is divided into a shorter portion of dark, dull maroon, 
giving place abruptly to the long (7 mm.) fringe of glowing bronze red. There is no 
trace of the fost-jimbrie wrinkle. Proceeding outward, the secondaries lose first the 
bluish gloss, and then change from dull dead black to dark brown. The primaries 
are still paler, sooty brown. The two inner pairs of tail-feathers and the inner web 
and tip of the third are clear rich dark buff. The bases of these inner feathers are 
dusky, and all the remaining rectrices are unglossed dead black. 
Beneath, the purplish-blue breast zone ends abruptly, and the entire lower breast, 
abdomen, sides and flanks are of the same fiery metallic bronze red as the back, except 
lighter. In extremely coloured individuals the feathers of this entire area lack black 
pigment, the main portion of the vane being dark chestnut. Usually, however, the 
feathers down the mid-line are at least half black, and variations of this colour may 
be found up to where the chestnut and metallic red colour is confined to flank patches. 
I collected one specimen of this extreme variation in the hinterland of Sarawak. The 
amount of black pigment present in these ventral feathers is wholly individual. In 
two male birds from the same set of eggs, hatched and reared by their mother, at the 
moult into the first-year plumage, one showed solid chestnut on the posterior ventral 
surface with only extreme basal black mottling; the other had only the margins 
chestnut—comparable in extent with the white margins on the ventral plumage of the 
VOL, II T 
