Copper Pheasant

About the Copper Pheasant

The copper pheasant (Syrmaticus soemmerringii), also known as Soemmerring's pheasant or yamadori (ヤマドリ), is a pheasant endemic to the Japanese archipelago. The scientific name commemorates the German scientist Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring. It is the official bird of multiple Japanese prefectures, cities, and towns. It was commonly hunted for sport throughout the 20th century.

Its population has been in consistent decline since the 1970s due to factors including habitat destruction and predation, but the most widely cited cause is overhunting. The copper pheasant was described in 1830 by Coenraad Temmerick as Phasianus soemmerringii. It was named for the German scientist Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, while the subspecies S. s. ijimae is named for Japanese zoologist Isao Ijima. It was reclassified into the Syrmaticus genus in 1914 by William Beebe, despite the differences between the males, because he saw a high number of similarities between females of the genus. However, based on the reports of interbreeding between the copper pheasant and the green pheasant (Phasianus versicolor) in Nobusuke Takatsukasa's 1943 pamphlet, Studies of the Galli of Nippon, the Ornithological... Wikipedia →