MALAY PEACOCK PHEASANT 79 



ran out and made a threatening motion at him. The bee-eater took hurriedly to flight, 

 and I saw that the aggressor was a Malay Peacock Pheasant. Whether one of the 

 former pair of combatants, I had no means of knowing. No further signs of aggressive- 

 ness was observed. The bird, alert as the wildest of wild things, walked slowly close 

 to the edge of the glade, and coming to a log half sunk into the mould, began pecking 

 and scratching vigorously. What would ground birds do without the everlasting 

 termites which all feathered creatures seem to enjoy so much, and whose long-suffering 

 colonies are so readily accessible ? Soldiers and workers alike are eaten, although I have 

 found stray heads with jaws fixed firmly into the crops of these birds, showing that the 

 brave militia had died fighting. 



A large gourd-like fruit fell crashing to the ground near by. The drongos ceased 

 their tree-top dance, and a tupaia fled away into the jungle at frantic speed. The 

 pheasant stretched its neck high, cackled, looked in every direction for a moment and 

 went on with its feeding. 



The usual thing finally happened to me : a family of babblers found me out and 

 shrieked their discovery to the world, father, mother and children all joining in the 

 outcry. The Peacock Pheasant hardly waited to glance in my direction, but slipped 

 away into the jungle shadow. Again in my pheasant study did I realize with what 

 certainty the wild creatures interpret the sounds they hear. The crashing of a gourd 

 as of a cannon-ball falling to earth is hardly noticed — it marks a natural and harmless 

 jungle happening — but a cry of warning, though from a member of an unrelated 

 group of birds, is recognized and acted on without hesitation. I told the babblers what 

 I thought of them and how well they were named, but they had the last word, as usual, 

 and long after I had left the glade I could hear the chorus of triumph and the babble 

 of tongues tearing my character to shreds in the depths of the jungle. And as I turned 

 back toward the river a band of gibbons took up the jubilation, and laughed and jeered 

 high up in the tree-tops. A white Sahib had dared to enter the depths of the jungle, 

 and was now retreating ! If one could only explain that they ought all to be thankful 

 that I was a Sahib using a field-glass more often than a gun. Only the pheasants were 

 silent, listening somewhere deep among the leech-infested undergrowth. 



GENERAL DISTRIBUTION 



The Malay Peacock Pheasant is essentially a bird of the lowland jungle, seldom 

 ascending the bukits even to a moderate height, although I once saw a single bird at 

 about a thousand feet. Its place at higher altitudes is taken by the Malay bronze-tailed 

 pheasant. Its northern limit is probably about 8° N. Lat., not far from Salang or 

 Junk-seylon Islands. It is also found in the mountains of Sumatra. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



As is the case with so many birds of the dense, humid, tropical jungles, the life 

 history of this bird is almost wholly unknown, and many weeks of hard search revealed 

 to me sidelights which served only to whet my desire to know more. I have already 

 told of the difficulties of watching in these leech-filled jungles. 



