Howdy, friends.  It’s time for more birds.  Our bird this week was unwittingly suggested by The Inscrutable Avoaleph, who posted a picture of the Kalij pheasant in the open thread last week.  

This bird is native to the Himalayan foothills, where it prefers forested areas and thickets.  It has a very large range, tracking the mountains beginning in Pakistan and proceeding roughly southeast through India, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand.  

Kalji pheasants were introduced to the island of Hawaii as a game bird in 1962, and have since spread to the Big Island, Maui and Oahu, where they live in the montane foothills.  Its not all cuteness and iridescent feathers, though.  As the pheasants have a taste for invasive fruiting such as Banana poka, strawberry guava, and clidemia and in consuming them, assure that their seeds will spread to anywhere the bird poops.  They are omnivorous, and in addition to fruit, invasive or otherwise, use their claws to scratch at dirt and eat any insects, worms or seeds they are able to find.  

The bird nests by excavating a shallow hole in the ground.  In Asia these pheasants are monogamous, but due to crowding and competition for habitat in Hawaii, they tend to form “cooperative breeding” groups of up to seven individuals.  The group consists of one female and an up to half a dozen males.  The female incubates the chicks alone, but the males help with everything else, including feeding the chicks and defending the group’s territory.  This arrangement allows the chicks, once they are able, to contribute to the group and possibly eventually work their way up to being a member of the lead pair.  If they stuck with the arrangement common in Asia, each new generation of chicks would have to depart as soon as possible, and there just isn’t enough territory for them to do so in Hawaii.  

The Kalij pheasant is rated as “of least concern” by the IUCN.  Although its population is decreasing, the bird remains common throughout its very, very large range.  Have a good weekend, everyone.  Be kind to yourselves and others.

Links: Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/5cnkv4at, https://tinyurl.com/yr8rtpnr, https://tinyurl.com/5e3h5x32, https://tinyurl.com/ypbjp5pv, https://tinyurl.com/y4eab6hv, https://tinyurl.com/22ph9e74, https://tinyurl.com/2tkud7xs, https://tinyurl.com/vywd9fh8