Common pheasant

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus described the species in 1758 under its present name. He needed no long description, because every naturalist already knew the bird. Phasianus is the Latin word for a pheasant. The epithet colchicus means of Colchis, in what is now western Georgia. The Greeks called the river there the Phasis, and the bird took its name from it. The English word pheasant has the same root.

About 30 subspecies fall into five to eight groups. The groups differ in the neck ring, the eyebrow stripe and the colour of the rump. A genetic study traced the species to the forests of southeastern China. The first split happened about 3.4 million years ago. The green pheasant of Japan is sometimes treated as a subspecies. The two produce fertile young wherever they meet.

Evolution and relatives

The pheasant belongs to the family Phasianidae, with grouse, partridges and junglefowl. It was once thought to be a close relative of the chicken. Newer work puts the two in separate subfamilies that parted over 20 million years ago. Only the common pheasant and the green pheasant now sit in the genus Phasianus. The common pheasant is the type species of that genus.

In 2005 the species held the smallest known genome of any living amniote. It measures about 0.97 picograms, roughly a third of the human genome. The black-chinned hummingbird has since taken that record. Western and eastern populations were probably separated during a glaciation. The gap was too short for them to become separate species.

Appearance

The cock is a showy bird with a very long, barred tail. Almost 50 centimetres of a cock's total length is tail. The body is barred in bright gold, copper-red and chestnut with a green and purple sheen. A bottle-green head carries a small crest and a bare red wattle. Two ear tufts stand up behind the face. Many races wear a white neck ring, but the nominate race does not.

The hen is mottled brown all over, with a tail of about 20 centimetres. Young birds look like the hen until the cocks grow bright feathers at about ten weeks. The wings span 56 to 86 centimetres. A cock averages 1.2 kilograms and a hen 0.9 kg. Captive breeding has produced cocks from nearly white to almost black. The dark form is called the melanistic mutant, and estates release it in some places.

Habitat and range

The natural range runs from the Black Sea and the Caspian east to Manchuria, Korea, China and Taiwan. The bird also reaches the northern foothills of the Caucasus in Europe. It lives in grassland near water with small copses for cover. It uses farmland, scrub, hedges, marshes and the edges of woodland. It keeps out of dense rainforest, alpine forest and very dry country.

The Romans carried the pheasant into Europe. It was naturalised in Britain by about AD 1059 and then died out in most of the country. Fresh releases of white-ringed birds followed in the 18th century. British birds today are a mixture of many subspecies. By 1950 the pheasant bred throughout the British Isles.

The first North American introduction came in 1773. The first large success came in the Willamette Valley of Oregon in 1881. The largest American populations now sit in the Great Plains and the Corn Belt. Introductions failed in the humid southern states and in the Southwest. GBIF holds occurrence records from 107 countries. iNaturalist carries 74,114 observations of the species.

Diet and feeding

The pheasant eats almost anything it finds. Plant food includes grain, seeds, shoots, mast, berries, fruit and leaves. Corn, wheat, barley and flax are important crops in its diet. It takes weed seeds such as foxtail, ragweed and sunflower. Wild grapes, apples and blackberries also appear.

Animal food includes slugs, earthworms, ant eggs, wireworms, caterpillars and grasshoppers. It sometimes kills a lizard, a field vole, another small mammal or a small bird. The bird scratches in the undergrowth and probes with the bill. It feeds mostly in the early morning and again in the evening. It holds the tail level while it feeds and raises it while it runs. In dry country it takes its water from dew, insects and juicy plants.

Behaviour and social life

The pheasant spends most of its life on the ground. It runs quickly and prefers running to flying. When startled it explodes upward almost vertically with a whirring of wings. It gives a kok kok kok call as it goes. Cruising flight runs at 43 to 61 kilometres per hour. A chased bird can reach 90 km/h.

The birds flock in autumn, sometimes in groups of up to 50. A winter flock may hold one sex or both. Cocks leave first when the groups break up in early spring. The bird roosts on the ground and in sheltered trees. It dust bathes, raking sand into the plumage to clean it.

Home ranges are larger in the nesting season than in winter. Wintering hens in Missouri used about 63.7 hectares and hens in Maryland about 49.7. Ranges of 76 and 96 hectares were measured in Iowa. Where the birds are shot they learn to fear people and slip away quietly.

Communication and senses

The crow of the cock is the sound most people know. It is a loud double squawk with a sharp end, and it carries a long way. A cock crows to hold his territory, mostly at dawn and dusk in the breeding season. An almost silent wing flap often comes first. A burst of wing-whirring follows the call. Hens call more quietly and often go unheard.

Alarm brings a hoarse croaking note from both sexes. Display matters as much as sound in the spring. In the lateral display a cock walks a slow half circle in front of a hen. He drops the near wing, lowers his head and raises the wattle. Hens choose cocks with long tails, long ear tufts and black points on the wattle. Overall brightness does not seem to sway them.

Reproduction and life cycle

Cocks are polygynous and gather a harem of hens. A harem may hold 2 to 18 females. Each hen usually keeps to one cock for the season. Cocks set up crowing territories from the middle of March. A cock that claims ground early usually outranks a later arrival. Rivals fly at each other breast first, bite the wattles and kick.

The hen scrapes a hollow in the ground under thick cover or a hedge. She lines it with grass and dead leaves. She lays one egg a day until the clutch holds eight to fifteen olive-brown eggs. A larger clutch means that two or more hens have used the same nest. She incubates alone for twenty-three to twenty-five days. A nest in a haystack or in another bird's old nest is occasional.

Chicks hatch with open eyes and a full coat of down. They leave the nest within hours and feed themselves at once. They fly after 12 to 14 days and look like adults by 15 weeks. They stay with the hen for 70 to 80 days. Wild birds average about 3 years, and nearly all die by that age. Captive birds live 11 to 18 years, and one reached 27.

Predators and threats

Red foxes are the most important nest predator. Birds of prey take adults on the ground and in the air. A hen faced with a predator may feign a broken wing to lead it away. She may instead sit completely still and rely on her brown plumage. When a brood is attacked, more than one chick is usually lost.

Cold, wet weather kills many chicks. About 21 to 46% of adult hens survive a year, and only 7% of cocks. Shooting explains much of the difference for the cocks. Cars, pesticides and farm machinery kill adults too. Nearly all wild pheasants are dead by the age of three. The species catches Newcastle disease easily and can pass it to other birds.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the common pheasant as Least Concern. The species is widespread, and people release it in huge numbers. The British population swings from about 50 million in July to under 5 million in June. Most released birds do not survive twelve months. Britain has raised the number of birds released sharply since the 1980s.

Wild populations tell a different story in North America. Numbers there have fallen over the last 30 years, mostly on farmland. Changes in cropping, pesticides and habitat loss are the likely causes. Hens need thick grassy cover to nest, and modern fields hold less of it. Native races are also disappearing through crossing with released birds.

The last black-necked pheasants in Europe live in the Nestos delta in Greece. That population was estimated at 100 to 250 birds in 2012. Bulgaria lost its native birds in the 1970s through crossing with eastern stock.

Relationship with humans

The common pheasant is among the most hunted birds in the world. Stone Age people hunted it in its native range. Apicius wrote recipes for pheasant meat in the first century AD. Columella described how to keep the birds in the same century. Palladius repeated the advice in the fourth century.

British estates shoot pheasants from the first of October to the first of February. Beaters drive the birds over paying guns on a formal shoot. Retrievers, spaniels and pointing breeds find and fetch the birds. King George V shot over 1,000 pheasants in six days in December 1913. South Dakota alone takes over a million birds a year, from over 200,000 hunters.

Pheasant farming is intensive and supplies estates, restaurants and home cooks. Poachers have long taken pheasants from British estates. The birds compete with native gamebirds and can pass disease to them. One study found pheasants beating prairie chickens in 78% of encounters.

In culture and myth

The Greeks knew the bird as the bird of the river Phasis. That river, now the Rioni in Georgia, ran through ancient Colchis. Jason and the Argonauts sailed up it in the story of the Golden Fleece. A long-standing story says the Greeks carried pheasants home from Colchis. Archaeology contradicts it, because Balkan pheasant bones are far older.

The Paiwan people of Taiwan carve pheasant motifs on the beams of their houses. Paiwan commoners wear pheasant feathers, while chiefs wear those of the mountain hawk-eagle. In China the bird is often called the mountain chicken. South Dakota chose the ring-necked pheasant as its state bird. It is one of only two American state birds that is not a native species.

A rhyme from the 19th century joked about the cost of a driven shoot. It weighed a bird that cost a guinea to rear against a carcass worth half a crown. Roald Dahl built Danny the Champion of the World around pheasant poaching.