WHITE-TAILED WATTLED PHEASANT 
Lobiophasis bulwert Sharpe 
NAMES.—Generic: Lobzophasis, from the Greek JoBdc, lobe or wattle, and gac.tavds, pheasant, from the very 
highly developed cephalic wattles. Specific: du/werd, after His Excellency H. F. Bulwer, Governor of Labuan. 
English: White-tailed Wattled or Bulwer’s Pheasant. Native: Blaiou (Kayan and Dyak, Sarawak); Bau-eu 
(Dutch Borneo); Bagier (circa Mount Dulit). 
BRIEF DESCRIPTION.—Male: Neck all around and upper breast dark crimson ; remaining plumage black, 
all the feathers narrowly margined with steel-blue. Upper tail-coverts and tail pure white. Bare skin of head and 
wattles bright blue; legs and feet red. The immature male has the tail coverts and tail chestnut. Female: 
Brownish-~-buff above, finely mottled with black ; lower plumage rufous similarly mottled ; tail clear chestnut. 
RANGE.—Central Borneo. 
THE WHITE-TAILED PHEASANT IN ITS HAUNTS 
As a rule animal life is not abundant in the Bornean jungle, compared with 
the great primeval forests of South America. Occasionally, however, I was treated 
to most interesting sights, and such days will always remain most vividly impressed 
on my mind. Once, far up near the foot-hills of the mountains, on a tributary of 
the upper Rejang in Sarawak, I had pushed on around a sharp bend in the river, 
and was preparing to work up through the rapids ahead, when one of my Kayan 
paddlers said through the interpreter that he and his companions had heard of 
the death of a sub-chief at a village on a side branch of the river, and they would 
all like to go and pay their respects to the deceased—in words, half English, half 
Malay, to that effect. I always made it a rule to comply with all the little cere- 
monies of my savage helpers, and to allow any tribal customs, religious or otherwise, 
and in return I found they always gave me most honest, efficient service. I was 
rather disappointed at having to stop, but as the afternoon was half over we could 
not have made much more progress against the boiling, yellow rapids just ahead. 
So I gave my permission, and the canoes were quickly beached on a sandbar. 
The Kayans with their great truncated, sword-like knives cut down the under- 
growth and erected two little raised shelters for me and my Malay servants, well 
out of the reach of any possible sudden rise of water. Having made certain that 
Tuan needed nothing more that they could provide, they unpacked their small bundles 
of possessions and proceeded to adorn themselves with what pieces of black cloth 
they possessed, and arrayed at last, they dropped swiftly out of sight down-stream, 
and I was left canoeless in the heart of Borneo. I knew I could trust the savages, 
however, and began at once to cast about for a way of getting into the forest which 
began at the very bank of the river. The undergrowth was extremely dense, but at 
the second circling I intersected a low game-trail. I fear it was but a wild-boar 
path, and a “pig-high” trail was never intended for the passage of a six-foot 
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