White eared pheasant

White eared pheasant

Dolan’s eared pheasant, Bee's pheasant

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
SPECIES
Crossoptilon crossoptilon

The white eared pheasant (Crossoptilon crossoptilon ), also known as Dolan’s eared pheasant or Bee's pheasant, is a species of "eared pheasant" that get its name because its colouration is white and has the prominent ear tufts of the genus, not because it has white ears. The indigenous people of Himalaya call it shagga, meaning snow fowl. This gregarious bird lives in large flocks, foraging on alpine meadows close to or above the snowline throughout the year. C. crossoptilon is found in China, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Tibet, where it tends to inhabit mixed forests and can be found around Buddhist monasteries.

Geography

Continents
Countries

Habits and Lifestyle

White eared pheasants tend to fly a great deal more than their close relatives, such as the brown eared pheasant (C. mantchuricum ) and the blue eared pheasant (C. auritum ). All three species are capable of hovering or volplaning over deep snow, with the aid of their great, wide tails. Eared pheasants move across deep snow by whirring their wings and fluttering close to the ground, and supporting their weight on their rectrices. Eared pheasant flight was often described as poor by the hunter collectors of the 18th century, who used dogs to flush the birds from the ground for shooting. Eared pheasants do not waste their energy on flying when quadrupeds prey on them because they have adapted many defensive escape behaviors that do not require flight. They have a high aptitude for sustained flight — movements that only take them a few hundred yards at a time, but in the snowy seasons this is very useful. This ability to cover large distances by flight is reminiscent of ptarmigans, sage grouse, and Syrmaticus pheasants, all of which inhabit snowy regions and use sustained flight for feeding during winter. Characteristic of these species and C. crossoptilon is the lack of a prominent tailing wing notch.

Lifestyle
Seasonal behavior
Bird's call

Diet and Nutrition

C. crossoptilon forages for tubers and roots in alpine meadows, often in the company of yaks or other hoofed stock. In winter, the white eared pheasant subsists on pine needles, juniper berries, wolf berries, and the desiccated seed pods of iris, lily, and allium. When hard-pressed during the most severe winter storms, which may blow for weeks at a time, eared pheasants may subsist upon pine pitch and deer, rabbit, and yak dung.

Mating Habits

The Szechuan white eared pheasant will not mate until it is two years old, then it will go into a heated breeding frenzy around the end of April. The breeding lasts until June and these pheasants usually produce four to seven eggs per clutch. The incubation period for eggs is 24–25 days.

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Although not much sexual dimorphism exists among the Szechuan white eared pheasant, the cocks are considerably larger than the hens. They can reach a length of 86–96 cm and weigh 1400–2050 g for females and 2350–2750 g for males.

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Population

Population number

The Szechuan white eared pheasant has now become a near-threatened species. Human development and encroaching on its habitat in agricultural China has reduced the range of the species, and hunting of these pheasants for food has threatened their numbers severely.

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An estimated 6,700 to 33,000 individuals exist in the wild today. C. crossoptilon is informally protected by the area’s Tibetan Buddhist culture.

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References

1. White eared pheasant Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_eared_pheasant
2. White eared pheasant on The IUCN Red List site - https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22679292/92809416
3. Xeno-canto bird call - https://xeno-canto.org/491208

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