Birding Despite Disability

Today in Petchaburi Province of Thailand, we unwittingly waded into the taxonomic nightmare of Lophura nycthemera crawfurdi vs. Lophura leucomelanos crawfurdi.

Let’s start with a photo, taken at a blind referred to by our guide as Bo Lung Sin:

Our guide called this a Kalij Pheasant. This surprised us, as we had been studying ahead of time and expected the Kalij to be much darker. We consulted out 2002 edition of Robson, which indicated that this should be the crawfurdi ssp. of the Silver Pheasant.

“No Silver Pheasant in Kaeng Krachan,” said our guide. He pointed out the plates in the Birds of Thailand (Lekhakhun):

We looked at his book, and we figured that it simply contained an error, as it refers Kalij on the plate (#19) but lists the scientific name of the Silver (L.n.). So we thought we had this pegged as a Silver, until I attempted to enter this into eBird, which gives only Kalij as a possibility in this region! Now what?

Further searching revealed that there is still some debate about the where the crawfurdi ssp. belongs, with some authors putting them under Silver and others under Kalij. This site for Thai National Parks is fun; it states that Kalij is found in Kaeng Krachan, but Silver is not – ok, good; yet it then states that Kalij has grey legs (!) That doesn’t jive with what we saw; and then, as if to prove my point, they include a photo of an individual from Kaeng Krachan with red legs!

Since I use eBird, I’m going with Kalij for now, but I plan to query them on this in order to be certain that they agree that this red-legged bird is being categorized correctly. It seems that the majority opinion I can find so far would indicate Kalij. But I’m open to being corrected!