On Phænicophaus Pyrrhocephalus. Forster.
By Vincent Legge, Esq., R. A.
This handsome malkoba, one of our rarest birds, is exclusively a denizen of forest or large secondary jungle, and has been thought hitherto to inhabit only the western and south-western districts of Ceylon. Layard notes it from the former part, Annals of Natural History, 1854, and speaks of it as very rare and frequenting the tops of high trees. He says that he could learn nothing of its habits or nidification from the natives. This accords with my experience of aboriginal knowledge on the subject; in those districts where I have shot it, I have found the natives quite ignorant about it, many of them never having seen it before. This arises from the fact of its existing in small numbers and being at the same time very shy and wary and an inhabitant of the interior of the forest. At the same time I have shewn the birds in my collection to intelligent natives and they have recognized it; nevertheless as I have shot it in company with villagers, well up in the birds of their neighbourhood, but who were totally ignorant about it, it must be allowed that taking its showy appearance into consideration, and the consequent likelihood of its not escaping observation, it is one of our rarest birds. Mr. Holdsworth in his Catalogue of Ceylon birds, Proceedings, Zvological Sociely, page 433, 1872, says, he saw one flying across a road in the Central Province. This proves that like many of our forest birds Centropus chlororhynchus, Dioruruss lophurhinus, Toccus gingalensis, Chrysocolaptes Stricklandi and others, it extends its range up to a considerable elevation.
It has been lately my good fortune to procure Phoenicophaus pyrrhocephalus in the splendid forests between Anuradhapoora and Trincomalie, a district which I was surprised to find very Ceylonese in the character of its Avifauna, the same spot yielding many island birds, such as Oreocincla spiloptera, Rubigula melanictera, Xantholæma rubricapilla and Chrysocolaptes Stricklandi, the latter in numbers. It was nevertheless a matter of some surprise to me to find this bird in the north of Ceylon, as I had become wedded to the belief that it was very local and quite a western inhabitant of our forests. It was as is usual, according to my experience, in pairs. While watching the movements and sprightly actions of a pair of Dissemurus malabaricus, one of these birds flew on to the limb of a lofty forest tree under which I was standing, and being partly obscured from my view by the leaves of an under-growing tree, so that I could only clearly
