Critically Endangered
Vietnamese crested argus
Rheinardia ocellata
Vietnamese crested argus is a bird in the family Phasianidae (order Galliformes) — Rheinardia ocellata, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Both sexes are similar in size, with females possessing a prominent marbled barring and more colourful dorsal plumage than the male. Additionally, there is no discernible trailing edge secondary wing notch amongst the flight feathers, indicating a capacity of sustained flight in species of this genus. The feet and legs of crested argus are also notable in the presence of curiously developed leg scales in males that are widened in such a matter that they give each limb the appearance of the foreleg of a varanid lizard.
The average length of the female is 74–75 cm (2.43–2.46 ft). Despite being sexually dimorphic by length, the male only weighs about 20% more than the female.
Range and habitat
Like other peafowl, Vietnamese crested argus retire on emergent trees above the forest canopy for many hours a day. The tail covert (or "train") of the male is the longest of any bird and is believed to contain the longest (and widest) feathers to occur in a wild bird. The Reeves's pheasant has tail feathers of similar length but that are considerably narrower.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
The diet consists mainly of invertebrates, mollusks, amphibians, small reptiles, bamboo shoots, leaves, fruits and fungi. The head has two crests. The hind crest, that extends down the occiput, is erected when alarmed and during intentional behaviors among them pair bonding and courtship displays.
In crisis
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Vietnamese crested argus is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Vietnamese crested argus, Wikidata item Q845065. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
