EXPLORE | BASIC INSTINCTS
SHY BY NATURE, BUT
SHOWY IN CONQUEST
THE WESTERN TRAGOPAN is a scarce,
shy, and elusive bird. Males are as beau-
tiful to behold as they are rare to spot.
Locals call the species jujurana, king
of birds. Perhaps 3,300 survive in the
wild, in India’s Himachal Pradesh state.
That’s where filmmaker Munmun
Dhalaria spent most of 2017 and
2018, making a documentary on the
jujurana. One day as she hid in a bird
blind, a male drew near, splendid in his
orange-feather ascot and white-spotted
black cloak. After browsing for food, he
hopped onto a boulder and began call-
ing, aiming to woo females and warn off
rivals. Dhalaria, a National Geographic
explorer, watched and filmed the bird
for 35 minutes, one of the longest doc-
umented jujurana sightings in the wild.
Witnessing a mating call is one
thing—an actual mating, quite another.
It’s sometimes glimpsed at the world’s
only captive-breeding program for this
pheasant cousin, in Himachal Pradesh.
The male sidles up to the female. He
deploys his finery: His head sprouts
blue horns, his tail feathers fan, his
rainbow wattle unfurls. At passion’s
peak, he ducks out of view, bursts forth
again, rushes the female, mounts—and
they mate for 10 seconds. Though brief,
it’s effective. During the next six to eight
weeks, she’ll lay three to five eggs and
hatch them. Captive-bred birds form a
reserve as wild populations shrink. The
program has about three dozen birds
and aims to release some into the wild
in 2020. —PATRICIA EDMONDS
PHOTOGRAPH BY MUNMUN DHALARIA
CONSERVATION STATUS
The International Union for
Conservation of Nature labels
the bird vulnerable; it is hunted
for its meat and plumage, and
its habitat is fragmented.
HABITAT/RANGE
Endemic to the western
Himalaya in northern India, the
bird prefers undisturbed for-
ests with lots of undergrowth
where it can feed and hide.