Lophophorus lhuysii Chinese alias: Green Pheasant, chicken, chicken hawk, Tan Fritillaria chicken, sheep and chicken
Large chicken. Body length 58 - 82 cm, weight of 692 - 1400 grams. 4 May - breeding, nesting in trees and shrubs, eggs each 6 - 12, 23 - 25 days incubation period. The male head, the lower face and ear coverts are flashing green Avision, turn back for the red metal, has the crown feathers covered the neck from the top of the rear with a metal, bronze, red copper turn back; the nape of the neck and neck side and back in front of a metal copper, the mid back, shoulder plume and the wing coverts and turn into copper, and shining metallic green blue; lower back and waist white feather. Dark brown feathers with blue and green feathers Luyuan. Lower body black, corner gray. The upper body feathers in the sunlight like a rainbow is "monaul", because of its green tail, so the name "Lophophorus lhuysii".
Global vulnerability (Collar et al., 1994). Past common, now rare. Mountain area in Western Sichuan at an altitude of 3000 to 4900 meters, and marginal in Chinese northwest of Yunnan, Eastern Tibet, southeastern Qinghai and southern Gansu.
The forest habitat line above 3000 5000 meters of alpine meadow, shrub and bare rock area, especially love many cliffs and rocks in alpine shrub and shrub meadow in winter, often down to 3000 meters of forest and shrub land activities.
Food: Lophophorus lhuysii is typical of herbivorous birds, to plant fruit, seeds and berries for food. By digging underground part of the plant root, rhizome, corm and feed them in high altitude alpine meadow and shrub, mainly with powerful mouth mining roots and pecking, rarely use claws scratching. They were hooked beak is strong to adapt to this kind of life evolved, according to the observation of distribution of mountain, the species of Fritillaria bulbs on love very much, so in the local, the species of soil called Fritillaria chicken. The mountain in winter because the snow is too thick, it is difficult to find the gravel, then devour the coals, therefore also known as "Tan chicken", because its mouth is very strong, and the front end is bent like a hook, like the eagle mouth, called "chicken hawk".
Activities: diurnal, often into pairs or small groups of activities, sometimes integrated in winter 8 a larger group of only 9 to more than 10. The day, love haunts ridge area, shrub or tree habitat in the evening of the low dense branches. Temperament alert, a movement that stretched his neck to wait and see, if found dangerous, immediately drilled into the thickets or darted away. Resident bird。 Strong legs, good at running. With the help of the airflow upward lift in flight, from low to high altitude hover, this phenomenon is rare in other chickens.
Song: spring and summer love. The male in the rock, repeatedly guli... Sound. The females sometimes make the same. A short guo-guo-guo issued male show, frightened to make a low geee calls, occasionally making a dull winter a... AWU, a... AWU sound.