Eighty years ago, a British ornithologist on Taiwan met up with a tribe of Bunun aborigines. As he was trying to communicate, the headdress of one of the tribesmen caught his interest: a couple of foot-and-a-half-long black feathers spotted with white.

As far as he had traveled, he had never seen feathers like these. He had to spend a bit of money to "pluck" the feathers off the aborigine's head. Then he sent them back to England for study.

The results showed that the feathers' "original owner" belonged to a new species, piquing zoologists' interest in the mysterious newcomer.

The ornithologist continued searching, but he was beaten to the punch by a Japanese, who caught one of the birds at Mount T'a near Ali Mountain. The Japanese sent it as a gift to his emperor, naming it the mikado pheasant. At that time Taiwan was under Japanese occupation, so this "native Taiwan product" wound up with a Japanese name.

Actually, "mikado," or "imperial," is not an inappropriate name. With a crimson face, a body of beautiful royal blue and black, and a long tail, the bird indeed has a regal appearance.

Since the pheasant is "imperial," it naturally stays secluded. Most hide out between 1,600 to 3,500 meters high in the mountains around Nantou in central Taiwan. This region has steep slopes, covered with dense forests of bamboo and deciduous pine. It's not easy to penetrate the empire of the mikado pheasant.

Why do they hide themselves away? According to Lu Kuang-yang, a biology professor at National Taiwan Normal University, animals of similar species seek out different territories to avoid competition over food.

There are three species of pheasants on Taiwan. The ring-necked pheasant inhabits low elevations, and the Swinhoe's blue pheasant lives at middle elevations, while the mikado pheasant has been "forced" up in the mountains.

Of course, its choice of habitat may also have something to do with the bird's personality.

The mikado pheasant is quiet and rarely utters a sound. It's also rather cool headed and imperturbable. It won't fly off scared at the first sound it hears, so it's hard to find. And it doesn't make a lot of racket like partridges, which are close cousins.

But just because it doesn't squawk a lot, don't think it's a mute. During the mating season from March to July, the male sings gu-gu gu-gu as a love song to attract a partner. Females produce eggs three times a year, laying from 15 to 20 each time. After five months, the chicks can find food on their own. At two, they're "grown up" and choose mates.

Mikado pheasants usually look for food at dawn and dusk. But they haven't fully realized the perils of their beauty. People set traps along their customary feeding grounds to catch them when they leave the bushes.

After Retrocession in 1945, because the Japanese like to admire them, mikado pheasants were caught in large quantities, and the number of wild ones fell off sharply.

Just how many are left? There are no precise figures at present. But in 1966 an international wildlife organization listed Taiwan's mikado pheasant as an endangered species. This captured the attention of many conservationists on Taiwan.

The protection work initiated then fell in two areas. One was the passage of a law prohibiting the birds' capture or killing. The other was the setting up of a breeding station at a reservoir in Tainan County. After breeding, the pheasants were released in a nature sanctuary at Jade Mountain National Park.

This April, Japan returned 45 pheasants that it had bred from six captured on Taiwan 25 years ago. These "superbabies" were the product of six generations of breeding. At present they are in the Taipei zoo.

While breeding in captivity has thus obtained rather positive results, there's a concern that interbreeding may lead to degeneration. But breeders at the Taipei zoo feel that since most animals mate with close relatives anyway, interbreeding shouldn't be a problem.

But can the pheasants adjust to living outside their natural mountain habitat? Dr. Hsieh Hsiao-t'ung, a longtime observer of the birds, believes that wild mikado pheasants are sufficient in number to propagate themselves naturally if people would only stop capturing and killing them.

At any rate, the danger of extinction still exists. Three years ago, six mikado pheasants were found caged up near Nantou waiting to be sold. When the Taichung Bird-Watchers' Society found out about it, they notified the police, hoping they would free the "hostages." But because the regulations do not prohibit people from buying or selling the birds, nothing could be done. To plug up the loophole, the Council of Agriculture is considering adding a provision to its proposed wild animal protection law, but the dust still hasn't settled.

If beauty means losing its freedom, perhaps the mikado pheasant would prefer to be a little less attractive.