Edward's Pheasant

Open encyclopedia reference

Edwards's pheasant (Lophura edwardsi) is a bird of the pheasant family Phasianidae and is endemic to the seasonal tropical forests of central Vietnam. It is named after the French ornithologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards and first described to science in 1896. The bird's length is 58–65 centimetres (23–26 in) and has red legs and facial skin. The male is mainly blue-black with a crest, and the female is a drab brown bird. The alarm call is a puk!-puk!-puk!. There are two varieties; the nominate form L. e. edwardsi has a white crest and upper tail, whereas the northern form, usually called Vietnamese pheasant, is found with a variable number of white rectrices. This difference in the two forms may be due to inbreeding of a restricted, fragmented population there, and has also been seen in captive, inbred L. edwardsi. In 2012 the nominate form of Edwards's pheasant have been uplisted to Critically Endangered by BirdLife International, having suffered from deforestation, hunting and the use of defoliants during the Vietnam War.

Wikipedia contributors, Edwards's pheasant; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T06:23:21.500948+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.

Identity & source status

Scientific name

Lophura edwardsi (Oustalet, 1896)

Name authority

(Oustalet, 1896)

Common name

Edward's Pheasant

Rank

species

Accepted status

accepted

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Aves

Order

Galliformes

Family

Phasianidae

Genus

Lophura

Extinction status

Recorded extant

Classification family tree

Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.

1. domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
2. kingdomAnimalia
3. phylumChordata
4. subphylumVertebrata
5. infraphylumGnathostomata
6. parvphylumOsteichthyes
7. megaclassTetrapoda
8. classAves
9. orderGalliformes
10. familyPhasianidae
11. genusLophura J. Fleming, 1822
12. speciesLophura edwardsi (Oustalet, 1896)

Close classified relatives

These entries share the source’s genus, Lophura. They are not necessarily the closest relatives established by molecular evidence.

Browse 123 records assigned to Phasianidae.

Names & synonyms

Names explicitly linked to this accepted taxon in the source. Synonymy can change with revision.

Documented distribution

Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.

Source literature & publication evidence

References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.

1. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=176077 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references

Origins, evidence & remaining research

Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.

Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record.

Dataset citation & attribution

This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11

Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.

Stable key: col:6QMJW. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.