Golden pheasant
Chrysolophus pictus
— Where the name comes from
Chrysolophus is Greek, chrysós, “gold”, and lóphos, “crest”: the golden tuft that falls over the male’s nape. Pictus in Latin means “painted”, and Linnaeus could not have found a more exact word for a bird that is red, gold, orange, green and blue.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Gamebirds
- Habitat
- Dense mountain forest and bamboo thickets
- Range
- The mountains of central China; introduced populations in Europe
- Size
- Male 90–105 cm, two thirds of it tail; 550–700 g
- Diet
- Seeds, leaves, shoots, invertebrates
- Lifespan
- 5–6 years in the wild, over 15 in captivity
— Characteristics
- 01
The male has an orange cape barred with black that he spreads in front of his face.
- 02
The female is brown and camouflaged.
- 03
It is extremely shy, and in the forest is heard far more than seen.
— What sets it apart
All that colour does not make it easy to see. It lives in the dark undergrowth of the Chinese mountains and runs off at the slightest noise: most of what is known about its behaviour comes from aviary birds. When courting, the male stands side-on to the female and spreads his cape like a fan until it hides his beak, leaving only his eye showing. Kept in Europe since the eighteenth century, it was released in the United Kingdom, where it lived in the wild for a century; today that population has all but disappeared.
