The discovery of Swinhoe's Pheasant

The discovery of Swinhoe's Pheasant

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Did you remember the discovery of Mikado pheasant ?
Through two tail feather, identified as a new species

How about Swinhoe's Pheasant, this so beautiful birds
Does it have any special discovery ?

Actually, as early as 1862
Mr.Swinhoe found it and in the report referred to it

The Swinhoe's Pheasant is also Taiwan's endemic species of the first to attract the eyes of European and American naturalists

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Why Swinhoe's Pheasant will be found earlier than Mikado Pheasant ?

We can surmise by its living environment

The living environment of the Swinhoe's Pheasant is distributed from low altitude 200 meters to the mid-high more than 2000 m

At that time came to Taiwan's explorers, naturalists
Also began to probe from the plains to low altitude hills
Swinhoe become an overnight sensation after the Swinhoe's Pheasant was found, named

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Many species in Taiwan , their English name are named after him
ex ：Swinhoe's frog , Swinhoe's tree lizard ...

Who is Robert Swinhoe ?

We talk it after the start of the Opium War

After the Opium War , the Qing Dynasty and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Nanking , then open trade

Since then, much British consular staff, the French missionaries, and many foreign naturalists set foot on this land, to uncover this mysterious veil

And the young Swinhoe is one of them, but he did not know he will be propelled to fame

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Swinhoe was born in Kolkata, India, because of understanding official Mandarin and the local Amoy dialect (Cantonese ) , 18 years old will joined the China consular corps.

he served as consul at Amoy ( Xiamen )、the southern city of Taiwan-fu (today's Tainan or Kaohsiung )

He spent his spare time in Southern-east Asia collecting natural history specimens
He sent many of his early specimens back to John Gould for further confirmation and identification by experts.

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On 12 December 1860 Robert Swinhoe, aged 24, was appointed as the first British Vice-Consul to Formosa.
He moved the consulate to Tamsui in late 1861, but the weakened Swinhoe was obliged to temporarily return to London in May 1862.
And organize the collected specimens and information
Swinhoe's Pheasant is also published at this time

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---------- The following excerpts P.Z.S.L. Journal & Ibis Journal -----------

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1862 Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. Gould's published report ：
This exceedingly beautiful species is one of the most
remarkable novelties I have had the good fortune to describe ...
In dedicating this fine bird to Mr. Swinhoe, I feel that I am only paying a just compliment to a gentleman who must ever rank among the foremost of those travellers who have enriched ornithology by their numerous Eastern discoveries.

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1863 , The Ornithology of Formosn , ROBERT SWINHOE：
I was informed by my hunters that a second species of Pheasant, which was denominated by the Chinese colonists Wd-koe, was found in the interior mountains, that it was a true junglebird, frequenting the wild hill-ranges of the aborigines, and rarely descending to the lower hills that border on the Chinese territory, and that in the evening and early morning the male was in the habit of showing himself on an exposed branch or roof of a savage’s hut, uttering his crowing defiant note, while
he strutted and threw up his tail like a rooster.

I offered rewards and encouraged my men to do their utmost to procure me specimens of this bird, and I was so far successful that I managed to obtain a pair; but in my trip to the interior it was in vain that I sought to get a view of it in its native haunts, and to make acquaintance with it in a state of nature.

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------------------------------- Experience -------------------------------

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It is difficult to imagine the Swinhoe's Pheasant in the past in Tamsui, Kenting Eluanbi Lighthouse and other places have recorded
But now through research , observation and conservation
we can easier to see it in the wild