does the zoo label crawfurdi as a subspecies of Kalij, or is it just your own?
(BTW, just in case you hadn't already discovered this, the birds at Kaeng Krachan are crawfurdi, so the silver pheasant from your trip thread would be kalij if following this treatment).
@Chlidonias The zoo labels it as a subspecies of Kalij.
I only worked that out about the Kaeng Krachan pheasant after going through my Khao Kheow stuff and I'm not sure how to treat this. It certainly looks much more like a Silver Pheasant than a Kalij Pheasant based on other subspecies that I've seen in Europe but I've not really given it a huge amount of thought to be honest since it's a year bird and a lifer either way. I suppose I'll have to make my mind up if/when I see another subspecies of one of the two species.
The listing of Silver Pheasant in the big year thread originally was because the Robson field guide lumps kalij with silver. HBW lists crawfurdi as a subspecies of kalij so I'll probably just be lazy and go with that for now.
oh, I didn't realise Robson lumps the two. That's stupid. Although it also makes a certain amount of sense. However that is not a general treatment. (I have an older version of Robson where they are separate - do you have birds of southeast Asia or Thailand? I forget).
crawfurdi and lineata (which are probably best lumped together) tend to get swapped back and forth between silver and kalij. For me it makes a lot more sense to keep them in silver. The switch to the other team is only based on mitochondrial DNA studies.
I have the newest edition of Birds of Thailand published in 2016. Considering it's a new edition a lot of the taxonomy is odd, lumped Silver Pheasant, Zebra Dove lumped with Peaceful Dove, etc.
HBW using DNA studies is almost a bit hypocritical considering their method of splitting species.
is zebra and peaceful dove actually lumped, or is he just calling G. striata "peaceful dove"? In my (older) southeast Asia version he also calls it a peaceful dove but I'm not sure if he is actually lumping them or just using an inaccurate name.
You're right about the HBW there! On the basis of the Tobias Criteria, crawfurdi should most definitely be a silver pheasant subspecies!
