Wattled Pheasants

Certainly one of the most striking members of the whole group is Bulwer’s Wattled Pheasant (Lobiophasis bulweri) of the mountain forests of Sarawak, northern Borneo, the male of which has the head nearly naked and ornamented with three pairs of wattles, and a long, flowing tail of thirty-two pure white feathers. This splendid bird, which attains a length of thirty-five inches, more than half of which is taken up by the tail, has the neck and chest dark crimson, while the remainder of the plumage is black, each feather being margined with steel-blue. The female is but twenty inches long, and has only twenty-eight feathers in the tail, the general color of the plumage being brownish buff or rufous, finely mottled with black. Bulwer’s Pheasant is an extremely shy bird, frequenting the dense mountain forests at an elevation not exceeding 2000 feet, remaining mostly on the ground, and running through the jungle with the greatest rapidity.