250 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
mangrove islet. As they crossed the sun’s path, they became silhouettes of ebony ; 
when they swung up to their roost, they showed as purest ivory against the dark foliage. 
Forty, fifty, seventy came, all concentrating on one or two of the trees. 
Of the colours of such a scene none may write. The maze of rose, salmon, scarlet, 
violet, mauve, and the hundred unnamed tropical tints, succeeding one another and 
staining sky and sea and land, defy pen as well as brush. 
The afterglow of softened tones of orange and yellow had come, glowing strongest 
from the east, as if a new dawn had begun, when three birds walked quietly out of the 
bushes, and picked their way over the high tide drift-line of shells and corals. They 
were Green Junglefowl—two cocks and a hen, all young birds of the year. Even in this 
faint light I could catch an occasional metallic glint from the plumage of the leader as he 
scratched half-heartedly here and there among the shells. The small size of his comb 
and tail and the buff marks on his wings clearly betrayed his immaturity. 
The hen stabbed at a prickly pear fruit, and buried its beak deep in the rosy juice; 
another chased a flying insect. After a few minutes one of the cocks crouched and 
sprang into the air with a low cackle, and his two companions were on the wing a 
moment later. Up and up they went, out over the breakers, straight, as only birds can 
fly, to the mangroves. They almost vanished from my straining eyes before they landed, 
but I could see a branch bend beneath their weight before the afterglow snuffed out like 
a candle and the faint silver of the crescent moon began its dance on the ripples. The 
night wind arose, swept through the palm fronds and clattered their frilled edges 
together like a myriad castanets; the air was filled with the aromatic incense of leaves 
which I had crushed underfoot, and the last sound in my ears was the lulling crescendo 
boom of the breakers. 
GENERAL DISTRIBUTION 
The Javan Junglefowl bears the distinction of being the only member of the group 
included in this monograph whose home lies altogether south of the equator. It 
resembles its congener, the Ceylon junglefowl, in being confined chiefly to one large 
island. 
It is a bird of the drier coastal belt, extending inland along the lower valleys, and 
in some cases ascending the mountains to a considerable height, but always in places 
where the configuration of the land results in a lessened degree of humidity. I have no 
reliable record of its occurrence over twenty-three hundred feet, and at this point it is 
very rare, and shifts downward at the beginning of the rains. 
Besides this. altitudinal, the species has a marked longitudinal distribution in Java. 
It is found in greatest abundance on the east and north-east coasts, becoming more rare 
- aS we approach the western end of the island, where in many places it is altogether 
absent. As one of many examples of the data on which I base this statement, I found 
that on most of the big estates in the Preanger the red junglefowl is well known, while 
the Javan bird had never been seen or heard of. This is in country lower than one 
hundred feet elevation, from the sea-coast to a distance of forty miles inland. 
This eastern concentration of numbers becomes an actual centre of distribution 
when we add to this area the two easterly-stretching chains of small islands: Madura 
and Kangean to the north, and Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores and Alor to the east. 
