Cabot's Tragopan
Tragopan caboti
This creamy, partridge-like beauty is the only tragopan in its range and the world’s only pale-bellied tragopan. A thickset bird, usually encountered foraging in pairs in mid-altitude hill forest. Male is pale below and intricately spotted above, with pale polka dots on a black-and-chestnut background; has a similarly black-and-chestnut head with bright orange facial skin. Female is dark gray-brown with a slightly paler face and belly; wings and belly streaked paler. During courtship, male drums wings loudly and gives a bizarre, scarily infant-like waaah! followed by loud grunting notes.
Identification
Cabot's tragopan is a plump ground-dwelling bird with relatively short legs. The male grows to a length of about 60 cm (24 in) and a weight of around 1.4 kg (3 lb) while the female is about 10 cm (4 in) shorter and weighs around 0.9 kg (2 lb). The head of the male is black with reddish-orange streaks on either side and on the neck and similar-coloured bare skin on the cheeks and around the eye. Below the beak dangle blue and orange decorative, inflatable wattles and there are a pair of fleshy blue "horns" over the eyes. The upper parts of the body are reddish-brown, with large buff markings and the underparts are straw-coloured. The female is altogether a less-colourful bird. The head and upper parts are reddish-brown spotted with black and marked with triangular-shaped white patches and the underparts are greyish-brown with white markings.
Taxonomy
Cabot's tragopan has two recognized subspecies:
- Scientific name
- Tragopan caboti
- Authority
- (Gould, 1857)
- Order
- Galliformes
- Family
- Phasianidae
- Genus
- Tragopan
Range and habitat
Cabot's tragopan is endemic to mountain ranges in southeastern China where it is present in the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang. Its typical habitat is subtropical evergreen forest and other forests with a mix of deciduous and coniferous trees. Its altitudinal range is 600 to 1,800 metres (2,000 to 5,900 ft) and it is also present above the treeline. Populations are fragmented as it has limited ability to disperse and seems not to move across gaps in forest cover of over 500 metres (1,600 ft).
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
Migration pattern: Resident species.
Conservation
Population trend: declining.
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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