Alliteration for the win! This is one of my favorite birds at the Kansas City Zoo: a male golden pheasant. Like many birds, golden pheasants have drab-colored females and brightly-colored males. The males use their vibrant feathers to show off and try to impress the female in the hopes that she will choose him as a mate.
I've been lucky enough to see the KC Zoo's male displaying on a couple different occasions, and it is pretty impressive. He puffs himself up, fans out his tail feathers, sticks up the crest of yellow feathers on top of his head, fans out those orange and black feathers to form a semicircle that covers most of his face, and squawks and runs around trying to get himself right in front of the female's line of vision. And he's persistent too! One time I stood in front of their exhibit for at least 15 minutes and he just kept going at it, despite the fact that the female was clearly not interested AT ALL and was trying her best to get away from him. But he just kept on chasing her. It looked exhausting. For both of them, really.
Ah, nature.
Ah, nature.
"Ugh! Can you believe this guy?!"
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