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Kalij Pheasant
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Kalij Pheasant
Lophura leucomelanos
The kalij pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos), or simply kalij, is a pheasant found in forests and thickets, especially in the Himalayan foothills, from India, Nepal, Pakistan to western Thailand. Males are rather variable depending on the subspecies involved, but all have at least partially glossy bluish-black plumage, while females are overall brownish. Both sexes have a bare red face and greyish legs (the latter separating it from the red-legged silver pheasant). It is generally widespread, though three of its eastern subspecies (L. l. oatesi, L. l. lineata, and L. l. crawfurdi) are considered threatened and L. l. moffitti is virtually unknown in the wild.
The name is also spelled kaleege in old texts, such as Game Birds of India and Asia by Frank Finn, though no longer in his Indian Sporting Birds. The species was introduced to Hawaii in 1962 as a gamebird. On 21 October 2021, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir declared the kalij pheasant as bird of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
From the article Kalij pheasant on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
Males have a total length of 63 to 74 cm (25 to 29 in) and females 50 to 60 cm (20 to 24 in). Very roughly, the subspecies can be divided into two main groups, with the first (subspecies L. l. hamiltoni, L. l. leucomelanos, L. l. melanota, L. l. moffitti, and L. l. lathami) being found in the western and central part of the species' range, while the second (L. l. williamsi, L. l. oatesi, L. l. lineata, and L. l. crawfurdi) is found in the eastern part. In the males of the first group, most of the plumage is glossy blue-black, though with white to the rump or underparts in most subspecies, and in L. l. hamiltoni, the westernmost subspecies, the crest is white (all others have a blue-black crest). In the second group, the underparts and crest are glossy blue-black, but the tail and upperparts are white (or very pale grey) with most feathers densely vermiculated with black. Females are brownish. In some subspecies, the underparts are distinctly marked in whitish and black, while in others, most feathers are pale-edged, resulting in a scaly appearance.
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Every page naming Lophura leucomelanos in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 1081.