152 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
British Museum. It is a regular broad oval in shape and of a pale pinkish cream 
colour, being thus hardly distinguishable from the egg of the Bornean crested fireback. 
It measures 51 X 40 mm. 
It is but a truism to state that these pheasants are skulkers and runners rather 
than fliers. What ground bird whose home is amongst jungle undergrowth could be 
aught else? When approaching these birds with the greatest caution I have very often 
been able to catch a momentary glimpse of them, the white tail of.the male advertising 
him at once. When several of both sexes were together it was the males which first 
fled, the brown immature males and females delaying to have a second look at me, 
and then usually disappearing in a different direction. If when all had vanished I 
squatted and remained motionless, in ten or fifteen minutes I would hear what I judge 
is the covey call, a penetrating, rather metallic; Look/ kook ! uttered by both sexes. 
This would invariably become subdued by distance, the birds evidently converging at 
some far-off spot. But if the first place of meeting with the birds was a favourite 
feeding-ground, as evidenced by the abundant signs of scratching, one might be 
reasonably certain of seeing the birds at the same place on another day. Only in the 
morning or toward evening, however. Search as I might, I could never discover a 
single individual at other times of the day. 
The natives, both Kayans and Dyaks, told me that the birds had regular roosting- 
places, and that they set their snares about these trees. One young man—a “grey 
Dyak” as I called him, as he was one of those whose skin from head to foot was like 
grey powder, a common uncontagious disease among these people—undertook to lead 
me to one of these roosting-places. After a toilsome tramp of several miles through 
the low jungle we came to a series of steep hills, and near the summit of one of these 
elevations my guide suddenly stooped and picked up a tuft of feathers and part of 
the foot and leg of a White-tailed Pheasant. The bird had been caught in a snare 
which now dangled overhead from the tip of a sapling, and had been devoured by a 
zebra civet, so the Dyak said, indicating the species of the marauder by pointing to 
the bit of skin dangling at the back of his loin-cloth. A few paces farther he pointed 
to the ground, where there was abundant sign, showing that some good-sized bird or 
birds had been accustomed to spend the night in the branches overhead. The tree was 
slender and very smooth barked, and it stood quite isolated, its branches free from 
contact with those of the surrounding growths—a well-chosen roost for protection 
against night attacks. I asked the Dyak later how he discovered and recognized such 
roosts, and his answer was that the finding was by accident, but that such sign on 
a steep hillside could be made only by Blazou or Ruoi—the White-tailed or the argus, 
but that the latter never roosted in small trees, only in large ones. 
The spurs of the male White-tailed Pheasants are moderately developed, so that 
a certain amount of pugnacity is implied. Hewett states that they “are very 
pugnacious, and that their heads are consequently often raw and scarred, while they 
would attack any other birds put in their cages.” I saw no evidence of the scarring 
on the face and wattles of the birds which came under my observation, and those 
which I had in captivity were gentle, although it is true that they had no opportunity 
to attack birds other than their own species. I suppose that as it was not the breeding 
season they were quieter than they might have been six months before. 
