Falcipennis falcipennis

The sickle-winged grouse is a medium-sized grouse with a black throat mass with a white outer edge. The upper body is olive brown with black spots; the abdomen is white with black spots. The central tail feathers are brown, and the outer tail feathers are black with a wider white tip. The red eyebrow is prominent. It is different from the smaller hazel grouse in that the chest and upper back are nearly black, the crest is short, and the characteristic narrow and pointed primary flight feathers.
The plumage of male and female sickle-winged grouse is similar, but the female plumage is slightly lighter. The top of the head to the back of the neck is gray-olive or sandy yellow with narrow black spots; there is a white stripe behind the eye; the rest of the body feathers are black-brown, mixed with gray and sandy yellow worm-like spots, and the lower chest and abdomen are alternating black and white horizontal stripes; the wings are short and round, and the most special thing is that the

It is only found in Siberia, Lake Baikal and the upper reaches of the Lena River in the Russian Far East to the Okhotsk Coast, the Ussuri River and Sakhalin Island. In China, it is only distributed in the Lesser Khingan Mountains in Heilongjiang Province and the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River. It is very rare.
Sickle-winged chicken is a typical forest bird. It mainly inhabits undergrowth such as blueberry, cloudberry, dwarf stone pine, raspberry, gooseberry, and coniferous forests with lush vegetation and abundant berries such as larch, fir, spruce, etc., especially in low mountain areas where forest clearings, burned areas, fields, grasslands, swamps, and shrubs alternate. The altitude of its habitat is generally 700-1600 meters.

Siberian Grouse has no subspecies.

Siberian Grouse has no obvious migration behavior in autumn and winter, but the altitude of its habitat decreases slightly. They usually move in pairs during the breeding season, and form small groups of 3-10 during the non-breeding season, with a maximum of more than 10.

The main food of sickle-winged pheasants in winter is the tender branches, buds, and seeds of coniferous plants such as spruce, fir, and larch. In other seasons, in addition to coniferous trees, they also eat leaves, buds, flower buds, grass seeds, and berries of various shrubs and herbs such as blueberries, rock orchids, raspberries, cotton mosses, gooseberries, and strawberries. They also eat some Lepidoptera insects, beetles, snails, and ants.

The breeding season of sickle-winged pheasants is from May to July, and they begin to estrus and courtship behavior in late April. It is very similar to other grouse birds in terms of courtship, breeding, and brooding. The estrus male bird first rests on the tree, with its puffy feathers, swollen bright red skin above the eyes and a solemn posture similar to that of a grouse showing off its courtship. Its tail feathers are erected in a fan-like shape, and its head and neck are stretched straight and very low. Except for the slight rustling sound of the tail feathers raised or fan-shaped, the whole forest seems very quiet. Then the male bird flies to the ground, while preening its feathers, it makes a trembling and prolonged sound similar to "woo-woo-hu-hu" and a "kacha, kacha" sound similar to that of a grouse. The sound is very loud and can be heard hundreds of meters away. Sometimes they stand on a large tree stump, stretch their wings, and after a powerful flap, they jump more than 1 meter high and make a loud scream. This is repeated for several hours. After mating, the female bird begins to build a nest and lay eggs.

The habitat where the sickle-winged pheasant builds its nest is generally in the shrubs such as blueberries on the sunny hillside, often under fallen trees or on the ground next to tree roots. The nest is very simple, built in a depression on the ground with pine branches and small dead branches of shrubs such as blueberries, and covered with leaves, feathers and other things. The sickle-winged pheasant lays 6-10 eggs per nest. The color of the eggs is light brown, with small olive or brown spots, and the size is 43-48×31-32 mm. The female bird is responsible for incubation, and the incubation period is still unknown. It is just that the female bird can be seen in the mountains and forests with a nest of chicks from June to August.

Whether in Russia or China, the sickle-winged pheasant is very rare, becoming the rarest endangered species in the grouse family. In the 1960s, sporadic individuals were found in Russia, with a density of only 0.0025 per hectare. The small distribution area, especially the large-scale logging of pine and spruce forests in their habitats, is the main reason affecting their survival. Fortunately, an expedition team composed of German, Austrian and Russian scientists found a high-density group in the Russian Far East. The sickle-winged chicken has only been reported to be distributed in the Lesser Khingan Mountains in the northeast and the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River in China, but there have been no reports of them in the wild in recent decades, and there are no specimens of them in various research institutions and museums in China, so whether it still exists in the wild in China remains to be further investigated.

It is estimated that there are less than 100 breeding pairs of sickle-winged chickens in China. On September 5, 2001, Xinhua News Agency quoted the research conclusions of the Heilongjiang Wildlife Research Institute and officially announced that the wild sickle-winged chicken has become extinct in China.

The global population of Sickle-winged Grouse is unknown, but it is common in the range of activity and the population is on a downward trend. The species has a narrow and limited distribution range and is believed to have a moderate decline in population. The decline is due to habitat loss, reduced precipitation, tourism impacts, and road development, which have changed the living environment. It has been listed as a species of near-threatened survival.

Listed in the "IUCN Red List of Threatened Species" 2016 ver 3.1-Near Threatened (NT).

Listed in the second level of China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021).

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