Blyth's Tragopan is a pheasant whose male has red, gray, and white plumage. It forages in the undergrowth of evergreen mountain forest.
The male has a yellow face, gray upperparts with white spots, a red breast and hindcrown, and a white band at the base of the tail. The female is brown with pale speckling and a faint pale eye-ring.
Male Blyth’s Tragopans have red breasts and white-spotted plumage. In Myanmar’s mountains they inhabit forests containing oaks and chestnuts, moving slowly through low vegetation. Males call from the forest early in the breeding-season morning.
A 2021 study compared Mount Kennedy and Mount Saramati in Myanmar, about 340 kilometres apart, following fieldwork in 2014 and 2016. Photographs of seven males showed red bare facial skin in two Kennedy birds and yellowish or orange skin in five birds from the Saramati area.
Genetic material from samples of seven birds also revealed a Kennedy grouping in mitochondrial and combined analyses. Nuclear information alone did not clearly separate the populations. The researchers proposed that intervening lowlands may have reduced movement between the mountains, allowing differences to develop.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The 2021 authors proposed special conservation priority for the Mount Kennedy population as a distinct evolutionary unit. Their recommendation would retain geographically distinctive populations along with their forest habitats. They also identified the distribution between mountains and possible dietary effects on facial colour as subjects needing further study.