Mrs. Hume's pheasant
Mrs. Hume's pheasant, Syrmaticus humiae, also known as Hume's pheasant or the bar-tailed pheasant, is a large forest bird. It is the state bird of Mizoram and Manipur. The species is named after Mary Ann Grindall Hume, wife of the British naturalist Allan Octavian Hume.
Conservation status: Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (3.1); listed in CITES Appendix I.
Description: The bird can grow up to 90 cm long. The male has a long greyish-white tail with black and brown bands, a greyish-brown head, bare red facial skin, chestnut-brown plumage, a yellowish bill, brownish-orange eyes, white wing bars, and metallic blue neck feathers. The female is chestnut brown with a whitish throat, buff-colored belly, and a white-tipped tail. There are two recognized subspecies.
Habitat and range: It lives in forests across Mizoram, the Patkai Range, Manipur, Yunnan, and northern Myanmar and Thailand.
Diet and breeding: It mainly eats vegetation. The female lays 3 to 12 creamy white eggs in nests made of leaves, twigs, and feathers.
Threats and protection: Ongoing habitat loss, fragmentation, and hunting threaten the species. It is protected under CITES Appendix I.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 10:01 (CET).