MIKADO PHEASANT 



Synnatictis mikado (Grant) 



Names. — Specific : mikado, the title of the Emperor of Japan, within whose possessions this pheasant lives. 

 English : Mikado Pheasant. 



Brief Description. — Male: Head blue black; facial skin red; neck, breast and mantle black, with a 

 purple fringe enclosing a velvety black spot ; rest of upper parts black, with narrow steel-blue fringe ; tail-coverts 

 and tail black with white cross-bars ; secondaries and many coverts tipped with white ; posterior under parts black. 

 Female : Head and neck olive brown, becoming rufous on crown and nape ; ear-coverts black and white ; mantle, 

 back and rump black, mottled with rufous, and with a conspicuous white arrow-mark or shaft-streak ; scapulars 

 and coverts with two black ocelli framed in rufous and olive; secondaries barred with rufous and black ; central 

 tail-feathers chestnut, pale buff on margins and mottled with black, with a dozen black cross-bars ; lateral feathers 

 with black and white tips ; chin and throat brownish white ; breast olive grey ; belly and sides whitish. 



Range. — Mount Arizan, central Formosa. 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



About the year 1906 Mr. Walter Goodfellow, while on a collecting expedition in the 

 central highlands of Formosa, obtained two long black tail-feathers of a pheasant. 

 These were named Calophasis mikado by Mr. Grant, who wrote of them that they were 

 shaped like the central rectrices of Hume's pheasant, were black in colour and crossed 

 with a dozen narrow grey bands about 38 mm. apart. They were imperfect at the base, 

 and measured about 450 mm. in length. 



Mr. Goodfellow says of these: "I found these feathers in the head-dress of a 

 savage, who had come to carry our baggage. He said he had killed the bird on Mount 

 Arizan and that it was rare." 



These type fragments are now in the British Museum, where I examined them. 

 The basal parts of the shafts are not imperfect, but bent around a bit of thong and 

 bound again to the shaft higher up with brown and red twine. 



On the Racu Racu Mountains at seven thousand feet elevation the same collector 

 later secured a female pheasant which proved to be a Mikado. 



In 1907 Rothschild described the adult male and argued that this and the allied 

 barred-back pheasants should all be included with the true Phasiamis. 



Another collector who was fortunate enough to observe the Mikado Pheasant was 

 Dr. Moltrecht, who, during a stay of three months in Formosa, obtained an adult and an 

 immature male, besides shooting a female which he was unable to secure. He says that 

 the adult male was shot at an elevation of eight thousand seven hundred feet on Mount 

 Arizan, and that the females are to be found at lower elevations. 



The sum total of our knowledge of this pheasant in its Formosan haunts is 

 contained in the following communication from Mr. Goodfellow. (Ibis, 1912, pp. 



655-657)- 



197 



