🇯🇵Japan·National Bird·since 1947
🦃Green Pheasant
The bird that brings the peach boy.
Japan's national bird, the green pheasant, is endemic to the Japanese archipelago — found nowhere else in the world. The Ornithological Society of Japan selected it in 1947 over other contenders like the red-crowned crane and the copper pheasant.
Why this animal?
It's native to all four main Japanese islands, has a striking iridescent green plumage on the male, and appears in classic Japanese folktales — most famously 'Momotaro' (the Peach Boy), who travels with a pheasant, a monkey, and a dog.
Things to know
- ·Males have brilliant bottle-green feathers; females are camouflaged brown.
- ·Green pheasants are unusually tolerant of low-level seismic vibrations and are said to call loudly before earthquakes — folklore that earned them attention from researchers.
- ·Unlike most pheasants, they nest on the ground and rarely fly more than short distances.
- ·Japan briefly considered the red-crowned crane instead, but the crane's habitat extends to mainland Asia — the pheasant is uniquely Japanese.
- ·They live across rural Japan and are still legal hunting game in some prefectures, despite the national designation.