Pale Buff With Dark Barring Cheer Pheasant

About the Pale Buff With Dark Barring Cheer Pheasant

This is the Cheer's natural wild-type plumage: a soft buffy-grey ground finely overlaid with dark barring across the mantle, back, wings and the long tail, the cock's bars heavier than the browner, more subdued hen's. The breast feathers are pale with black scalloping and a long, untidy grey occipital crest tops the head, both sexes carrying bright red bare facial skin. Lacking the brilliance of most pheasants, this quiet, dignified barring is the hallmark of a vulnerable Himalayan rarity kept for conservation.