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Apparently, there is a traditional Chinese saying that seeing one bird in the wild is better than seeing ten other birds. Although it stretches belief, the saying continues to state that seeing one mammal is better than seeing ten pheasants (Bella from Alpinebirding confirmed that this saying exists and did not just come to me in a dream. Bella, you owe me at least one beer on our next trip for mentioning your company here without having to).
Of course, this is nonsense – pheasants are probably among the most overrated of all birds. The pimps of the bird world. I’d rather see one shy pitta or robin than ten overconfident, arrogant birds.
Somehow, I feel like this post about some pheasants I saw in China got off to a false start – it’s not the kind of motivation for blog readers to keep reading this post. It’s like a management consultant telling a client that he can’t do anything for them. Wait, does someone remind me? Don’t do it.
So, back to the wonderful world of pheasants in China. My favorite is the Blood Pheasant.
Of course, we all remember Edward Blood (1908-1991), the American skier who competed in the combined Nordic events at the 1932 and 1936 Winter Olympics (origin).
What is less obvious is why anyone would name a Chinese pheasant an American skier. So I set myself the challenge of getting to the bottom of it.
Surprisingly, there appears to be no connection between the pheasant and the skier. The bird’s name seems to come from the color of its tail feathers.
The Latin species name of Kalij Pheasant is leucomelanos, which means “white” (leukos) and “black” (melanos, both Greek words). It is hard to see how a non-colorblind naturalist could have given this name to a bird that is mostly dark blue with some prominent red areas.
Somewhat surprisingly (at least to me), the Kalij Pheasant was introduced and established as a gamebird in Hawaii. It turned out well for a researcher who could do the research for him Ph.D. thesis in “Social Behavior and Cooperative Breeding of Kalij Pheasants” in an area with better sanitary facilities than where I saw the bird (in rural Yunnan).
I feel that thanking your own baby for moral support in the recognition section of a Ph.D. thesis – as he did – was quite a lot.
Interestingly, in his work, the researcher discovered that the birds live in small groups led by a single male. That’s kind of the opposite of the division of labor described in the acknowledgments section of her thesis, where she says that during her research, her husband was “a reliable lab assistant, field assistant, computer technician and car mechanic for to me”.
The Golden Pheasant also seems a bit misnamed – the Latin species name painted (painted) gives a better indication of the different colors of the species.
For women, neither “painted” nor “gold” works particularly well, but “painted” still seems more appropriate.
If you can’t afford gold, you can go for a Silver Pheasant instead. And yes – it doesn’t look silvery either but sounds better than White Pheasant (as usual, girls don’t have to apply to the naming process).
If a number of Pakistani researchers published an English language paper in a Russian journal (Russian Journal of Ecology) on a vaguely interesting topic (“Effect of different mating sex ratios on the efficiency of Silver Pheasant“), then the abstract unfortunately ends up being completely incomprehensible, at least to me. What a pity.
As a popular game bird, the Ring-necked Pheasant seems to be of such high importance in the US that there are several papers that only discuss the species in individual US states. Examples:
I like this picture of a woman in Nanhui.
If you are both interested in birds and in wargames, maybe you should check out study “Using Small, Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Mist Nets to Catch Ring-Necked Pheasants”.
HBW seems unsure how to spell this bird correctly: White Eared Pheasant o White Eared-Pheasant? To be safe, they just use the same spellings on the species page. Hmm
Possibly as a result of this insecurity, the species is listed as Near Threatened.
The Latin name of the species, Crossoptilon crossoptilon, sounds like a failed Elon Musk venture. A hybrid between a rocket and an electric vehicle, traveling underground, perhaps.
That’s the strength Elliot’s Pheasants the need per day depends on the weather, or more precisely, the temperature. Daily consumption is lowest in summer with about 260 kJ/day and highest in winter with about 400 kJ/day, more than 50% more (origin).
How do you measure this, you may ask? It’s easy.
Apparently, you just collect the droppings of captive birds, weigh it and calculate back from there. Just don’t bring up the subject at a dinner with your in-laws.
This particular study concludes with the highly encouraging statement that “further studies are needed to determine whether 29.6 C is the optimal temperature for Elliot’s Pheasant.” I can easily imagine a young person reading this sentence and immediately wanting to become an ornithologist.
The person on eBird describing the Gray Peacock-Pheasant probably stayed up late and watched a horror movie before writing the species entry, which reads “a strange pheasant that passes like a ghost through dense forests, rarely venturing into the open.”
As you might guess, the species gets its name from the eye pattern on the back of the males.
Iif you ask a Blue Eared Pheasant how it spends the day, if it’s a little on the nerdish side, it can give you a pretty specific answer: foraging (40.62%), resting (28.01%), moving (19.17%), and vigilance (12.55 %). Although the latter number may be slightly higher for male nerd birds and lower for female nerd birds, who spend more time feeding (source: HBW).
Irrelevant side note: It seems that in English language papers by Chinese authors, the species is often referred to as “Blue-eared Pheasant” (see e.g. here). The Chinese authors should have looked first at the (extremely white) “ears” of the pheasant.
Bonus note for science nerds (not specifically related to birds): Whenever Chinese researchers give percentages, they do so up to two digits behind the decimal – so the exact percentages in HBW citation above. Of course, in Western scientific papers, the idea is that the number of digits is an indication of how accurate the results are – so, a percentage indication of 33% means that the figure is less accurate than a figure of 33.00%. So, if the above paper was written by a Western researcher, the percentages given would be something like “foraging (41%), resting (28%), moving (19%) and guarding (13%)” .
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