Bird Research News

Vol.3 No.11

Copper Pheasant2006.11.10. Last Revised:2013.11.28.

Yamadori (Jpn) Syrmaticus soemmerringii

Morphology and classification
Classification: Galliformes Phasianidae
Wing length:
Tail length:
Culmen length:
Tarsus length:
Weight:♂ 205-230mm♂ 415-952mm♂ 23-31mm♂ 57-69mm♂ 943-1348g♀ 192-219mm♀ 164-205mm♀ 22-26mm♀ 53-60mm♀ 745-1000g

All measurement values are of subspecies Syrmaticus soemmerringii scintillans after
Kiyosu (1978).

Appearance:
Plumage colors of Copper Pheasantsvary between subspecies. In general,
however, male is reddish brown on theupper and underparts with black, chestnut, yellow and white lateral bars in thelong tail (Photo 1). In the subspecies ofthe southern Japan (S.s. soemmerringii
and ijimae), the plumage is generally
darker with dark red brown and black
horizontal bars in the tail. The southernmost subspecies (ijimae) has broad
white fringes to feathers of rump. On Photo 1. Male Copper
the other hand, all of females have genPheasant Syrmaticus
erally inconspicuous brown as female
soemmerringii scintilGreen Pheasants, but tinged with graylans.
ish brown or reddish brown. A reddish
brown tail with a white tip is characteristic of the female plumage.
The females of soemmerringii and ijimae are darker than those of
the other subspecies as in the males.

Vocalization:
Copper Pheasants hardly ever call. When alarmed, however, theyoccasionally utter a low "Kuk-kuk" tone or a high pitched "Kyukkyuk" and "Kichik-kichik" calls. Males make a loud sound by thewing-whirring display (drumming), especially during the breeding
season, to threaten any approaching enemies.

Distribution and Habitat
Distribution:
The Copper Pheasant is an endemic species of Japan and distributed as a resident in three (Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu) of the fourmain islands. In the snow-covered regions, however, some individuals descend to lower altitudes during winter. The Copper Pheasant is divided into five subspecies based on male plumage coloration, tail feather patterns and other features. Of Copper Pheasant
subspecies, scintillans is distributed from the Kansai region up toAomori Prefecture, northernmost Honshu. intermedius occurs in
the Chugoku region and Shikoku, while subrufus ranges in a partof Yamaguchi, Ehime and Kochi Prefectures as well as the Boso,Izu and Kii Peninsulas. soemmerringii and ijimae are found incentral to northern Kyushu and southern Kyushu, respectively. In
addition, there is a small number of introduced populations in
Hokkaido, nothernmost main island and other islands such as
Awaji, Shodo, Sado and the Oki Islands.
The classification of S.s. scintillans, intermedius and subrufus inparticular has been frequently questioned among some overseas
researchers as well, however, because the borderline between thesubspecies is indistinct, the distributions of different subspecies arecontinuous in some regions and plumage colors vary greatly
between individuals in the same population.
In addition, the presence or absence of a white part of the rump inparticular frequently plays a decisive role in distinguishing soemmerringii from ijimae, but some birds have a considera-2
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Kyoko Kajimoto

bly smaller white part in the boundary zone between the two subspecies ranges (Kawaji 2004). Confusion between the two subspecies poses a problem to game hunters and government officials
concerned every year because ijimae has been removed from gamebird list since 1979 due to the population decline. Since subspeciesclassification could become a major issue in conservation andsocial scenes in the future, genetic analyses are currently underway(Sakanashi et al. 2006).

Habitat:Copper Pheasants are a forest dweller, generally preferring a broad-leaved forest. But they also occur in conifer plantations, such asJapanese cedar and cypress. They occasionally bathe in the sunand dust in grasslands of a cutover.

Life history
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breeding season

891011 12

non-breeding season

Breeding system:
Copper Pheasants are assumed to be polygamous like Common
Pheasants Phasianus colchicus (Kiyosu 1978), but a recent study
suggested that they were monogamous (Takahashi 2011). The
male is frequently observed to jealously guard a single female for along period of time in the field. The female exclusively incubates
and primarily takes care of the chicks. In the Kanto region, central
Japan, males are engaged in a fierce battle of jumping and kicking
each other around the end of March. After such struggles, the maleusually moves about with a female.

Nest and egg:
Copper Pheasants make a nesting depression 20-30 cm deep on theground under a fallen tree, at the base of a large tree and in grasslands at a forest edge. They lay a small amount of tree leaves anddead grass on the bottom of a depression as nest lining.
The clutch size is usually 7-10 eggs. The mean egg size is 47.4
mm by 35.4 mm. An egg weighs 31.9 g on average and it is uniformly light tan in color.

Incubation and nestling periods, and fledging rate:
A female usually incubates eggs for about 24 days. The chicks
leave the nest a few hours after they hatch and move with theirmother, feeding by themselves. The young learn to fly to someextent about two weeks after hatching, but it is assumed that they
spend a few months primarily with the female parent. When you
approach a small young bird in the field, the female parent may
show threat behavior (a vigorous mock attack) or feign injury.
Juveniles grow almost to their full size about half a year after
hatching, when they are not distinguishable from adults. A groupconsisting of multiple males and females are occasionally observed in this period, but it is unclear whether they are all themembers of the same family. Some adults start to pair as early aslate September.

Diet and foraging behavior
Since Copper Pheasants are a game bird, the crop contents of individuals shot in the hunting season were studied (Ogasawara 1968,Kobayashi 1996). The crop contents consisted primarily of vegetable matter including green leaf stems, such as ferns and bamboograsses, the acorns of oak and beech and the berries of mistletoeand Ophiopogon japanicus. The author also detected ferns at ahigh rate in the crops of a few dozens of Copper Pheasants in winter (Kawaji & Yokoyama 2009). In addition, it is remarkable thatfruits and dead leaves of Japanese cedar Cryptomeria japonica
were found in their crops as well. It is known that Copper Pheasants are frequently observed in conifer plantations. It is assumed,

Bird Research News

Vol.3 No.11

2006.11.10. Last Revised:2013.11.28.

© Japan Bird Research Association
Sumiyoshi 1-29-9, Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan

バードリサーチ生態図鑑

therefore, that they use the plantations not only as a shelter but also
probably as a feeding ground.
It is known that the chicks and young birds need a considerable
amount of food of animal matter to grow normally in captivity, but
the diet of the wild population is poorly understood in the breeding
season. Copper Pheasants are also observed to peck at the ground
while foraging for food, but they frequently tear off fern and otherleaves, which suggests that they prefer leaves. When mistletoebears its fruits, they also peck at the fruits on the tree.

Topics of ecology, behavior and conservation● Decline in the number of hunted Copper Pheasants andthe issue of release

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Number of released birds (green)

Number of shot birds (red, thousand)

Although Copper Pheasants are an endemic species of Japan, they
have long been hunted as a game bird. However, recent decrease in
the number of hunted birds has aroused anxiety that Copper Pheasants may have declined in the wild. Captive-raised birds have beenreleased primarily in eastern and northern Japan since 1973 torestore the wild populations (Fig. 1). However, the study of thesurvival rate of released birds was far from satisfactory because it
only depended on the leg band recovery of hunted birds. The telemetry study of released bids showed that the survival rates variedwith seasons and sexes. Therefore, more effective release approaches that take this result into consideration are needed (Kawajiet al. 2009). In addition, Copper Pheasants are classified into fivesubspecies based on such features as plumage coloration and tailfeather morphology, but the possibility of genetic contamination
has been pointed out because it is suspected that non-native subspecies were released in some areas in the past. In addition, Copper Pheasants were released in regions originally free of them,such as Hokkaido, northern Japan and Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture. The released Copper Pheasants may have some impact on thelocal ecosystem (Kawaji 2002).

2010

Fig. 1. Changes in the number of hunted and released Copper Pheasants. Yaxis represents the number of birds shot (left) or released (right), and X-axis the year.

● Home range

Fig. 2. Home range of a male Copper Pheasant from January toDecember.

Monographs of pheasants havecarried no description of thehome range of Copper Pheasants. The telemetry study of amale Copper Pheasant showedthat it ranged in an area ofabout 10 ha throughout theyear in a favorable habitat withan adequate supply of food(Fig. 2). They probably have afairly large home range in ahabitat with adverse conditions, such as heavy snowfall
in winter. Copper Pheasants do

not show a strong preference for high tree layer. Since they are
assumed to favor a habitat with lush ferns in winter, it is pointed
out that forest floor vegetation plays as an important role as overstories in their habitat.

● RoostIt is said that forest pheasants usually roost on a tree at night except for a female incubating in a nest on the ground. This is regarded as a means to avoid nocturnal predators, such as carnivorous terrestrial mammals.
The male with a transmitter mentioned before roosted on theground as well (Kawaji 2006). However, the ground roost of thismale was located on a flat area above a steep slope on the side of aforest road, and therefore it could readily escape by rushing down
the slope even if it is attacked from behind while sleeping. Due tothe difficulty of direct observation of forest pheasants, such as
Copper Pheasants, descriptions of roosting behavior are extremelylimited. Further biotracking studies are expected to reveal somenew aspects of Copper Pheasant ecology in the future.

Literature
Kawaji N. 2002. Towards the population management of game birds - Current
status and issues of the Copper Pheasant -. Sanrin (1415) :54-59 [J]Kawaji N. 2004. Turning point of life and death by hunting - the Copper Pheasantsin Kyushu -. Shinrin Kagaku 41: 54-58 [J]Kawaji N. 2006. First observation of ground roosting of the Copper Pheasant. Jap.
J. Ornithol. 55 (2) :92-95 [J+E]
Kawaji N. & Yokoyama J. 2009. Food habits of the Copper Pheasant Syrmaticus
soemmerringii in winter season. Bulletin of FFPRI 8 (2): 127-132
Kawaji N., Maruyama T. & Yano Y. 2009. Mortality of released captive-bred
Copper Pheasants in a natural refuge area of Japan. Ornithol. Sci. 8: 125-130
Kiyosu Y. 1978. Encyclopedia of Birds of Japan II. Enlarged and revised edition.
Kodansha. Tokyo. [J].
Kobayashi K. 1996. Alpine bird Mikado Pheasant Syrmaticus mikado endemic toTaiwan. Tori to Shizen (80): 1-6 [J]Ogasawara K. 1968. Winter habitats and food habits of the Green and Copper
Pheasants. J. Yamashina Inst. for Ornithol. 5: 47-58 [J+E]
Sakanashi M., Baba Y., Kawaji N. & Koike H. 2006. Molecular phylogeography ofa Japanese endemic, the Copper Pheasant. J. Ornithology 147 (5) Suppl.1: 242.
Takahashi M. 2011. Breeding schedule and mating system of the Copper Pheasant Syrmaticus soemmerringii. J. Yamashina Inst. Ornithol. 43: 33-46 [J+E]
Languages of literature cited other than English: [J] in Japanese, [J+E] in Japanesewith English summary.

AuthorNoritomo KAWAJI Forestry and Forest Products Research InstituteSince I first saw a beautiful male Syrmaticus soemmerringii ijimae inthe woods in the vicinity of Kagoshima City, southern Kyushu where I
lived several decades ago, I had wanted to study mysterious Copper
Pheasants sometime. However, I moved to Sapporo, Hokkaido, northern Japan where the species does not occur originally. One day when
the idea of studying Copper Pheasants started to slip my mind, anacquaintance of mine brought me a “weakened pheasant”, which was amale Copper Pheasant (S. s. subrufus) to my surprise. I took this incident as some sort of fate and have begun to study this species since I
moved to Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, central Japan. Since I feel mylegs have become noticeably feeble lately, I am looking forward tomeeting some young researchers
who can run up steep slopes as fastas Copper Pheasants. Why not join
me in a pheasant study? It is a lotof fun.
syrmaticus@emobile.ne.jp35