Palawan Peacock-Pheasant

The adult male is the most peacock-like in appearance member of the genus Polyplectron. It has an erectile crest and highly iridescent electric blue-violet, metallic green-turquoise dorsal plumage. Its breast and ventral regions are a velvety black. The flight feathers (rectrices) are wide, flat, and rigid; velvety black on the inner edges and an iridescent violet-blue-green on the outer edges. Their terminal edges are squared. The tail feathers are black with very fine golden-brown speckling. Each tail plume and upper-tail covert is marked with highly iridescent, light-reflective "eyes" (ocelli), each bordered by black and gray; they are also tipped in bands of black and gray. The tail is held erect and expanded laterally together with the bodies of the birds. The males also raise one wing and lower the other, laterally compressing the body during pair-bonding, courtship displays as well and may also be antipredator adaptation. The female is slightly smaller than the male. Its contour plumage is cloudy silt in colouration. The mantle and breast are a dark sepia in coloration. The rectrices are essentially similar to those of the male, exhibiting marked adumbrations and stunning ocelli. Throughout, their plumage is earthen and difficult to distinguish from the substrate and branches. …

Endemic to the Philippines, the Palawan peacock-pheasant is found in the humid forests of Palawan Island in the southern part of the Philippine archipelago. They are confined to the lowlands and foothills, at elevations normally below 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above sea level.

Peacock-pheasants are highly invertivorous, taking isopods, earwigs, insect larvae, mollusks, centipedes and termites as well as small frogs, drupes, seeds and berries. They are strictly monogamous, renesting yearly. The female usually lays up to two eggs. Both parents rearing chicks for up to two years. Males act as sentinels of nest sites and are highly pugnacious during the reproductive cycle. Their call is a short high screech, each around 0.5 to 1 second long, and repeated every 5 seconds.