Malayan peacock-pheasant
species of bird
The Malayan peacock-pheasant (Polyplectron malacense) also known as crested peacock-pheasant or Malaysian peacock-pheasant, is a medium-sized pheasant of the galliform family Phasianidae. The closely related Bornean peacock-pheasant (P. schleiermacheri) was formerly included here as a subspecies, but as understood today, P. malacense is monotypic.
Description
It is one of the shortest-tailed peacock-pheasants. Adult males are about 50 cm long, about half of which is made up by the tail. Their tarsus measures approximately 6.5 cm, and their wings are 20–21 cm long; they weigh from over 600 to nearly 700 g.
The female is slightly smaller than the male, with a noticeably shorter tail; measuring about 40 cm overall, its tail is slightly less than 20 cm long, while its tarsus measures c.6 cm and its wing length is 18 cm. Adult females weigh about 450-550 g.
Plumage
Their plumage is generally pale brown with small black spots and bands all over, creating the "salt-and-pepper" effect found in most peacock-pheasants. It has iridescent blue-green eyespots with a buff border on its upperwings, back, and on the 22 rectrices, a white throat running down to the center of the breast, and a loose, pointed and upturned dark blue-green crest on its forehead. A bare facial skin surrounds the eyes with their bluish-white iris; usually pink, it becomes bright orange-red during courtship.
“Malayan peacock-pheasant” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Malayan, peacock-pheasant and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q268392. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Malayan peacock-pheasant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.