Mountain peacock-pheasant

Description

The mountain-pheasant (Polyplectron inopinatum (Rothschild,1903)) is a bird galliforme the family of Phasianidae.In the Malay peninsula,the mountain spurge occupies mountain habitats,leaving the lowland habitats to the Malaysian spurgeon.It is easily distinguished from the latter by the darker head and back,the brown-red lower parts and the longest and narrowest tail.The head,rather small,is completely devoid of crest,but there is a discreet collar.The sub-caudal coverts are long,and hide the first quarter of the tail.The tail,very elongated,graduated and pointed,is formed by about twenty rectors decorated with metallic ocelli.The beakit's grey.The legs,gray and thin,present in the male two spurs,while the females are completely devoid of them.The sexes are almost identical.In the adult male the head and neck are dark gray,finely dotted and spotted with white,especially on the throat.The lower parts,starting from the chest,are blackish and vermiculate of light gray.The lower part of the tail is brownish.The back is brown-brown with narrow black vermiculings and small blue ocelli,whose white-stained base hides the base of the gray feathers.The primaries are of a uniform opaque brown color.The sub-caudal coverts are brown-brown,but with more pronounced black bars.The outer feathers are covered with large blue ocelli on both sides.The tail is stained with black and suede,with green subterminial ocelli on each row of feathers,except on the pair of central rectors.The male of the first year is smaller and more opaque than the adult.The adult female is smaller in size and has a relatively smaller tail,less graded and consisting of only 18 rectors.It looks a lot like its companion,but in it the ocelli of the upper parts are replaced by black marks and those on the tail are practically absent.Young people are similar to females.