Species Spotlight

Species Spotlight: Swinhoe’s Pheasant

February 6, 2026 by Kai Pflug No Comments

Swinhoe’s Pheasant is a pheasant endemic to Taiwan.

The species is categorized as Near Threatened – an improvement from its earlier status as Vulnerable. There is some uncertainty about its population – one estimate from just one park is as high as another estimate for the whole population on Taiwan.

Compared to its closest mainland relative, the Silver Pheasant, it is a K-selected bird species (“quality strategy”) – basically, that means it has fewer and larger eggs than the Silver Pheasant, which is (at least relatively speaking) an r-selected bird species (“quantity strategy”).

(I count myself as a 0-selected species, meaning I have zero kids and no interest in passing on my genes).

Here is a treat for those interested in parasites: a paper titled “Characterization of co-infections of haemosporidian parasites in Swinhoe’s pheasant (Lophura swinhoii): Utilizing nanopore sequencing for species-level detection and mitochondrial-genome analysis”.

Exciting – it comes with profound insights such as “Avian haemosporidian parasites are vector-borne apicomplexans that infect bird species globally and pose considerable challenges in detection due to frequent co-infections and morphological convergence.”

Swinhoe’s Pheasant is also apparently a species prone to inbreeding (to be polite to the bird, let’s not call it incest): another paper “found higher levels of genetic drift and inbreeding in the Swinhoe’s pheasant genome”. But we should not hold that against them. There is probably not much choice on a smallish island like Taiwan.

The HBW also raises some suspicion about the sex life of the species – but then seems to shy away from taking any hard conclusions: “polygamy suspected, but pairs frequently seen together”.

In at least one respect, HBW is spot-on: “Most foraging seems to occur in early morning and late afternoon, typically along road edges”.

Indeed, the photos shown here were all taken on the side of a road at Dasyueshan, Taiwan, in the morning of November 08, 2025.

Written by Kai Pflug
Kai has lived in Shanghai for 22 years. He only started birding after moving to China, so he is far more familiar with Chinese birds than the ones back in his native Germany. As a birder, he considers himself strictly average and tries to make up for it with photography, which he shares on a separate website. Alas, most of the photos are pretty average as well. He hopes that few clients of his consulting firm—focused on China’s chemical industry—ever find this blog, as it might raise questions about his professional priorities. Much of his time is spent either editing posts for 10,000 Birds or cleaning the litter boxes of his numerous indoor cats. He occasionally considers writing a piece comparing the two activities.