The "blue chicken" unique to our country is mysterious and charming!

Recently, when sorting out infrared camera data in the Tangjiahe section of the Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan Province, a set of blue pheasant image data was discovered. This set of data was 6 years old from the last record in the Tangjiahe Nature Reserve.

The blue pheasant has gorgeous blue-grey feathers and a very elegant body. It likes to sing in unison, and its calls are loud and deep, which is a spectacular sight. Many people call this mysterious and charming bird "the blue demon pheasant".

Blue pheasant photographed in Tangjiahe (Photo source: Sichuan Provincial Forestry and Grassland Bureau)

In fact, the blue pheasant is a type of pheasant that is only found in my country. It is a national second-level key protected wild animal (2021) and has attracted widespread attention from people because of its beauty and rarity.

01Bright feathers and loud voice

In the deep mountains and forests at high altitudes and rarely visited by people, there lives a large chicken-like bird called the blue pheasant. The name comes from two reasons: one is that most of its feathers are blue-gray , and the other is that its tail feathers are scattered and drooping, like a horse's tail.

The blue pheasant is larger than ordinary domestic chickens, with a total length of 1 to 1.2 meters. They have distinct feathers: the whole feathers are blue, with a tuft of white hair on the head, red hair outside the eyelids, white hair under the eyelids, and the tip of the tail feathers is black. The tail feathers are composed of 24 feathers and can be used as decorations.

Beautiful blue pheasant (Photo source: Qilian Forestry Network)

The blue pheasant is a diurnal gregarious animal, roosting in trees in groups at night and foraging in the woods in groups during the day. Its food is mainly plant seeds, fruits, roots, stems, etc., and it also eats small insects such as snails and spiders.

One of the most obvious habits of the blue pheasant is that it calls in unison and sings in unison. The call of a single blue pheasant is deep and loud, and can be heard two or three kilometers away with the wind. The male bird usually calls "woo woo woo" or "ga ga ga", and when frightened, the male and female birds will make "squeak-ga" and "squeak-ga" sounds that can be heard several kilometers away.

Their leader is called the whistle rooster, the leader of the chorus. Every morning at dawn, the whistle rooster makes a clear and loud call, and then the flock of chickens begins a majestic and powerful "chorus", shaking the trees and forests. This is truly "the world becomes bright when the blue rooster sings".

The scene of the blue pheasants singing together is very spectacular , and everyone who sees it is shocked. Ethnic minority writer Yi Yechan described it in his essay "Blue Elves of My Hometown" as follows: "The blue pheasants run and call, responding to each other, the sounds rise and fall, and the quiet forest suddenly becomes noisy and lively."

02Endemic species have a long history

The blue pheasant mainly lives in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Ningxia and other places in my country. Among them, the Helan Mountains in Ningxia is the northernmost place where they live. It is a truly endemic species. In recent years, due to the advancement of artificial breeding technology, the blue pheasant has also been introduced to various countries in the world, and it is most commonly raised in zoos. Therefore, the "endemic" here can be understood as the blue pheasant living in the wild in China.

Blue pheasants living in groups (Photo source: Qilian Forestry Network)

The blue pheasant has been discovered for more than 1,000 years. During the Tang Dynasty, the tribute presented by Ningxia to the imperial court included "bird feathers", which were verified to be the feathers of the blue pheasant. The first record of the blue pheasant appeared in the local chronicle "New Records of Ningxia in the Jiajing Period" of the Ming Dynasty, saying that this bird once appeared in the Helan Mountains and was brave and aggressive.

The origin of the English name of the blue pheasant is only more than 200 years old. In 1811, the British Peter Simon Pallas discovered the blue pheasant during his expedition in China and named it Phasianus auritum, which means long-eared pheasant. The "auritum" is derived from the Latin word "auris".

03 Weak flying ability, brave and aggressive

From the perspective of animal taxonomy, the blue pheasant belongs to the genus Ephesus in the family Phasianidae in the order Galliformes.

Compared with other pheasants, pheasants have two outstanding characteristics:

First, they have a tuft of long, hard, upward-curved feathers on their ears, which is the main appearance feature that distinguishes pheasants from pheasants;

Second, their flying ability is weaker, and they prefer running and jumping to flying. Pheasants usually walk on the ground, run wildly when encountering danger, and spread their wings to fly low in an emergency, but they can usually only fly a short distance. When they want to peck at the top of a tree, they usually jump from the tree trunk to a low branch, and then jump from a low branch to a higher branch, repeatedly approaching the target.

There are four categories under the genus Pheasant, namely the brown pheasant, which is a first-class national key protected animal, and the blue pheasant, white pheasant and Tibetan pheasant, which are second-class national key protected animals.

Among the four types of pheasants, the most famous one is the brown pheasant. The ancients called the brave and aggressive brown pheasant a "yi bird", also known as "he (hé)", which symbolizes fortitude, fighting, and not caring about life and death. During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, military generals liked to wear brown crowns, hoping that they would be as resolute and brave as the brown pheasant. "As a bird, it is fierce and aggressive. There is no winner in the fight, and it is destined to die." The Three Kingdoms poet Cao Zhi told future generations through "He Fu" that the brown pheasant is aggressive by nature, and when two people fight, one will die. Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty recorded it in "Compendium of Materia Medica": "The brown chicken is fierce and aggressive, and its fight is destined to die. Today, people wear brown as a crown to symbolize this."

Brown pheasant (Source: see watermark)

Among the four major species of pheasants, the brown pheasant is more famous for its bravery and aggressiveness, but its body shape and appearance are slightly inferior to the blue pheasant.

The reason why blue pheasants were rarely discovered in the past is, firstly, because they are alert by nature and will actively avoid people or tall animals; secondly, they mainly live in mountain forests at higher altitudes, such as the Baixiongping and Luotuoling areas where infrared cameras are installed in the Tangjiahe section of the Sichuan Giant Panda National Park, which are both above 2,400 meters above sea level and people rarely go there.

In recent years, with the development of science and technology, infrared cameras have been gradually introduced into the observation and research of new species. This special Chinese pheasant, known as the "Blue Demon Chicken", has not only attracted more and more attention, but will also play a greater role in various fields.

References:

1. Book "Biological Research on Blue Pheasants", author Wu Yiqun, Science Press, 2016.

2. Paper “Ecology and Biology of Brown Eared Pheasant”, authors Lu Taichun and Liu Rusun, Acta Zoologica Sinica, No. 3, 2013.

3. Paper "Distribution range and population size of blue pheasants in Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve, Ningxia", authors Hu Tianhua and Wang Jifei, "Sichuan Animals" No. 6, 2012.

Author: Wei Deyong

Member of Guangdong Shenzhen Writers Association