The Blood Pheasant is a plump, short-tailed pheasant whose plumage ranges from grey-olive to bright crimson. It searches for food in groups during the day.
It has a rounded body and short tail, with plumage that varies from grey-olive to bright crimson. Bare skin around the red eyes is outlined in black.
Blood Pheasants eat mosses in mountain forest as well as other plants. At Lianhuashan in China, bryophytes form an important part of their diet throughout the seasons. The small green plants covering the forest floor are also food for this bird.
From April 2011 to October 2013, researchers collected 149 fresh fecal samples from wild Blood Pheasants at Lianhuashan Nature Reserve in Gansu. They dispersed the samples in water and examined plant cell structures under a microscope, separating bryophytes from other plants and identifying 11 bryophyte families.
Among plant material remaining in the droppings, the bryophyte proportion was lower in summer than in spring, autumn and winter. The proportion of a frequently occurring moss family and the visible extent of leaf-cell digestion also varied seasonally. These changes reveal part of the bird’s connection with small plants on the mountain forest floor.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The species’ conservation documentation identifies livestock grazing, hunting, plant gathering and logging as relevant threats. Habitat and resource protection and awareness work are among the listed actions. Habitat restoration and harvest management are considered likely future needs in Nepal. Maintaining mountain forest, including its food plants, is relevant to conservation.