Himalayan monal / Lophophorus impejanus male

This photo was taken at the Calgary Zoo yesterday, 21 September 2015. In November last year, I had managed to get a couple of shots of the less-colourful female, but the male was more or less in hiding. Then two weeks ago, I was able to get a really poor photo of the male. Yesterday, however, the male was out in the open, to my delight. What a magnificent bird it is, with its feathers of many colours.

“This colourful bird is commonly called the Impeyan after Lady Impey, wife of the British chief justice of Calcutta, who first kept them in captivity on the grounds of their estate in the late 18th century. Lady Impey kept extensive notes about habitat and behaviour which were of great use to biologists in their work on native species.

These beautiful birds have a very large range throughout Asia in Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet. However, in some areas they are threatened due to poaching and other human disturbances to their environment.

They are to be found primarily in mountainous regions; in summer, they are found in rocky, grass-covered meadows and winter in coniferous and mixed forests.

Their diet includes seeds, tubers, shoots, berries, terrestrial insects and their larvae. They dig extensively with their bill, up to 25 cm deep, creating distinctive dug-over areas in their territory. They forage throughout the day.” From the Calgary Zoo.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_monal