Silver Pheasant

The silver pheasant is a large pheasant found in forests, mainly in mountains, of mainland Southeast Asia and eastern and southern China. The male is black and white, with white upperparts and tail marked with black in the larger northern forms, and a glossy bluish-black crest and underparts. The female is mainly brown and shorter-tailed. Both sexes have a bare red face and red legs. Males of the largest subspecies reach a total length of 120 to 125 cm (47 to 49 in), including a tail up to 75 cm (30 in), while females are notably smaller. It has also been introduced on Vancouver Island in Canada.

About the silver pheasant

The silver pheasant is a large forest pheasant of mainland Southeast Asia and southern and eastern China, where it lives mainly in mountain forests. It belongs to the gallopheasant genus Lophura, alongside the firebacks, and is a close relative of the kalij pheasant. Males are black and white; females are mainly brown.

Its scientific name is Lophura nycthemera. Carl Linnaeus described the bird in 1758, naming China as the place it came from. The species name joins the Ancient Greek words for "night" and "day." The genus name Lophura means "crest-tail," from the Greek for crest and tail. Eleven species are now placed in the genus.

Size varies a great deal between subspecies. Males of the largest subspecies measure 120 to 125 cm (47–49 in) in total length, and the tail alone can account for up to 75 cm (30 in). Males of the smallest subspecies barely reach 70 cm (28 in), with a tail of about 30 cm (12 in). Males weigh 1.13 to 2.00 kg (2.5–4.4 lb). Females of every subspecies are clearly smaller, at 55 to 90 cm (22–35 in) long with a 24 to 32 cm (9.4–12.6 in) tail, and weigh 1.0 to 1.3 kg (2.2–2.9 lb).

In the northern subspecies, which are the largest, the male's upperparts and tail are white, with fine black markings on most feathers, while the crest and underparts are a glossy bluish-black. Southern males have greyer upperparts and tails with heavier black markings, so they look much darker overall. Young males take until their second year to reach full adult plumage. Females are brown and shorter-tailed; in some subspecies their underparts are whitish and strongly patterned with black. Both sexes have a bare red face and red legs.

Behavior and diet

The silver pheasant is common in aviculture. In the wild it lives in forests, mainly in mountains. It is closely related to the kalij pheasant, and the two are known to hybridize.

Pheasants as a group feed mostly on seeds, grains, roots and berries. In summer they add insects, fresh green shoots, spiders, earthworms and snails.

Pheasants in general are solitary or gather in small, loose flocks, and flocking increases outside the mating season. Their social structure is usually polygynous: one male holds a territory and attracts several females. Courtship displays rely on bright plumage, calls and wing-flapping, and rival males fight over females. Crowing is the male pheasant's territorial call, given most often at dusk and dawn.

Across the pheasant family, the female builds a ground nest hidden in tall grass, under bushes or against logs. A typical pheasant clutch is 8 to 15 eggs, incubated for 22 to 28 days, with one brood per year. Males take no part in nesting or raising chicks. Treat these as family-wide patterns rather than measured figures for this one species.

The silver pheasant is also part of a famous identity puzzle. The imperial pheasant, once thought to be a very rare species in its own right, turned out to be a naturally occurring hybrid between the silver pheasant and Edward's pheasant.

Range and habitat

Silver pheasants are native to mainland Southeast Asia and to eastern and southern China. They live in forests, mainly in mountains. The 15 recognized subspecies are spread across this range, from central and southern Sichuan and Guizhou in China through Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong and Fujian, to Myanmar, northern Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. One subspecies, L. n. whiteheadi, is found only on Hainan Island.

Several of these subspecies may simply be points along a gradual cline of color and size. At least seven subspecies, the nominate L. n. nycthemera among them, are thought to belong to such a cline; if that is confirmed, the other six would be merged into the nominate subspecies. Several other names once used, such as L. n. andersoni, are no longer considered valid by any major authority.

Outside Asia, silver pheasants have been introduced to Victoria Island in Nahuel Huapi Lake, in Neuquén, Argentina, and to Vancouver Island in Canada.

Silver pheasant vs kalij pheasant

The silver pheasant and the kalij pheasant are close relatives that hybridize, and two disputed forms, lineata and crawfurdi, have been placed with one species or the other. Mitochondrial DNA has now placed both with the kalij. The simplest field mark is the legs.

The Irrawaddy River is a major zoogeographic barrier. Silver pheasants live east of it. All kalij subspecies live west of it except the two disputed grey-legged forms, which live east of the river but are now treated as kalij.

Conservation status

The silver pheasant is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (BirdLife International, 2016). Overall it remains common in the wild, but that headline hides real problems at the subspecies level.

Three subspecies are rare and threatened: L. n. whiteheadi of Hainan Island, L. n. engelbachi of southern Laos and L. n. annamensis of southern Vietnam.

The silver pheasant also hybridizes. It interbreeds with the kalij pheasant, and the "imperial pheasant" is a hybrid between Edward's pheasant and the annamensis subspecies of southern Vietnam.