io8 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



feathers and bits of broken legbones. These together with one large wing feather 

 revealed the identity of the victim as an Ocellated Pheasant. 



The clearing was not more than two yards across, and was doubtless the first 

 attempt of a young, inexperienced bird. It was not on level ground, and in the centre 

 was part of a young rotan stem which the bird had not been able to remove. A slender 

 woody plant which grew within the arena, had been scraped clean of moss and bark near 

 the base, showing the persistent but ineffectual attempts the bird had made to uproot it. 

 A small stream wound around within fifty feet of the dancing place, and the surrounding 

 vegetation was of low, large-leaved plants and a scattering of tree ferns. While I 

 photographed the spot, a great woodpecker, clad in dull green and wine colour, beat a 

 continuous tattoo on the resonant bamboo stalks. In the middle upper jungles of the 

 Peninsula in which the Ocellated Pheasant makes its home, life other than birds is not 

 abundant, even to the careful observer. 



On another occasion I watched by a clearing which I supposed to belong to an 

 argus, but after an hour a calling Ocellated Pheasant approached, never, however, 

 coming within sight, and after circling my hiding-place it made slowly off. As I 

 sat quietly amid the swaying stems of bamboos and the trembling fronds of tree-ferns, 

 babblers in families and small birds in loose flocks of several species occasionally passed, 

 on their twittering, fly-catching paths of life. It was late afternoon and the creatures of 

 the jungle were making the most of the last hours of daylight. Two species of gaudy- 

 coloured squirrels leaped overhead, and now and then a tree-shrew pushed his sharp 

 muzzle around a neighbouring trunk and stared at me, but unaccountably did not give 

 the alarm. Close to me a bee-eater — lilac-fronted, flame-breasted — swooped after the 

 dancing gnats. Long-tailed drongos were courting a small, unornamented female — 

 three of them swooping about her at one time. As they flew and dipped and volplaned, 

 the two, round, feather tips swept after them, apparently wholly unconnected by any 

 physical bond. Two cock broadbills fought continually with constant enthusiasm and 

 equal discretion. In the rare intervals between their long-continued bouts both repaired 

 to the upper air, high above the forest, for refreshment, and there soared about, for all 

 the world like diminutive vultures, now and then dashing sideways after an insect. 

 Three small green parrakeets flew again and again across the pheasant's clearing, and a 

 pair of great .sombre-hued woodpeckers bigger than our American ivory-bills, hammered 

 vigorously, sending chips down upon the cleared arena. All these voices and sounds 

 would seem to show that there was no danger near ; the usual life of the jungle was 

 undisturbed ; but the pheasant knew better. I had neglected some little precaution, and 

 some stray strand of suspicious evidence had warned the bird that all was not well. 

 The woodpeckers might hammer and the drongos scream, but he sensed a something 

 which drew a dead-line about his arena ; he called, but half-heartedly, and after a 

 reconnaissance he returned to some unknown covert. I could not let him know that I 

 had no gun and that a half-hour's watch of his unconscious jungle life was all for which 

 I hoped. 



One other time and only a transient physical disability prevented me from seeing 

 one of these birds. A pheasant had been calling at dusk, and on my way back to camp 

 I turned aside and followed a narrow game trail to a stream. A loud rustle made me 

 crouch low, but whatever animal was the cause, it made its way off. I waited on 



