Male Ring-Necked Pheasant

Untouched color-colour photograph by J. McCombie.
Ring-necked Pheasant is a large, chicken-like bird with a long, pointed tail. It has fairly long legs, a small head, long neck, and plump body. The common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), is a bird in the pheasant family (Phasianidae). The word pheasant is derived from the ancient town of Phasis, the predecessor of the modern port city of Poti in Western Georgia.
Male Ring-necked Pheasants are gaudy birds with red faces and an irridescent green neck with a bold white ring. The male’s very long tail is coppery with thin, black bars. Females are brown with paler scaling on the upperparts; buff or cinnamon underparts with black spotting on the sides; and thin, black bars on their tails.
They forage on the ground in fields, where they eat waste grain, other seeds, and insects when available. Ring-necked Pheasants usually walk or run and only occasionally resort to flying, usually when disturbed at close range by humans or other predators. Males give a loud, cackling display that can be heard over long distances.
Look for Ring-necked pheasants on agricultural land and old fields—especially fields that are interspersed with grass ditches, hedges, marshes, woodland borders, and brushy groves. These birds also occur in an impressive range of habitats: in Hawaii, for example, they can be found from sea level to a 11,000 feet elevation. They can live in forests, grasslands, and deserts. Despite this versatility, Ring-necked Pheasants do gravitate to particular kinds of habitat for specific activities. Typically, they roost in trees or dense shrubs in spring and summer and in forested wetlands, farm fields and weedy areas in fall. For early season nesting, they seek cover along grassy roadsides, fence lines, ditches, and wetlands. As the season progresses and vegetation grows taller and denser, they shift their nesting activity to fields of hay, particularly alfalfa.
In fall and winter, Ring-necked Pheasants eat seeds—especially grain from farm fields—as well as grasses, leaves, roots, wild fruits and nuts, and insects. Their spring and summer diet is similar, but with a greater emphasis on animal prey and fresh greenery. They eat insects such as grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, crickets, and ants, as well as snails and earthworms. Ring-necked Pheasants forage in grasslands, hayfields, woodland edges, and brushy areas. They sometimes pick waste grain from cow manure in pastures. Pheasants take most of their food from the ground, scratching or digging with their bills. They can retrieve roots or seeds from as deep as three inches below the soil surface. They also sometimes forage in shrubs or trees for fruit, leaves, and buds.
The Ring-necked Pheasant’s nest is a rudimentary affair—unlined or sparsely lined with vegetation taken from beside the nest depression. Females gather grasses, leaves, weed stalks, fine twigs, corn husks, and-or a few feathers from their own breast with which to line the nest. The average nest bowl is about 7 inches across and 2.8 inches deep.
The female Ring-necked Pheasant chooses her nest site, which is usually less than half a mile from her wintering range. Nests are usually surrounded by tall vegetation and built on the ground, often in a natural depression or a hollow that the female scoops out herself, about a third of an inch to 3 inches deep.
Male Ring-necked Pheasants establish breeding territories in early spring. A male maintains sovereignty over his acreage by crowing and calling; he approaches intruders with head and tail erect, and may tear up grass that he then tosses. Competitors sometimes resort to physical combat. After a series of escalating threat displays, fighting cocks flutter upward, breast to breast, and bite at each other’s wattles. They may take turns leaping at each other with bill, claws, and spurs deployed. Usually the challenger runs away before long, and these fights are rarely fatal. Females assemble in breeding groups focused on a single male and his territory. The cock courts the hen with a variety of displays—strutting or running; spreading his tail and the wing closest to her while erecting the red wattles around his eyes and the feather-tufts behind his ears. He also “tidbits”—poses with head low while calling her to a morsel of food. A female may flee at first, leading the male on a chase punctuated by courtship displays. Males guard their groups of females from the advances of other males. Like many birds, Ring-necked Pheasants take frequent dust baths, raking their bills and scratching at the ground, shaking their wings to sweep dust and sand into their feathers, lying on their sides and rubbing their heads. Dust-bathing probably removes oil, dirt, parasites, dead skin cells, old feathers, and the sheaths of new feathers.
Ring-necked Pheasants are common within their range, although their numbers seem to have declined slightly since a peak in the mid-twentieth century. The North American Breeding Bird Survey estimates that populations in eastern and western North America have declined, but numbers in the center of the continent have risen. Partners in Flight estimates the global breeding population at about 50 million, with about 30 percent of them in North America (29 percent in the U.S., 1 percent in Canada). They score an 8 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, and they are not on the 2012 Watch List. Ring-necked Pheasants are a popular game bird, and in some places game managers stock pheasants on land. Hunters kill large numbers of male pheasants—sometimes several million in a single season—but the overall effect of hunting is probably not great, owing in part to the tendency for many female pheasants to mate with a single male. Auto accidents kill huge numbers of pheasants, and farm machinery also poses a threat. Contemporary farming practices have degraded most prime pheasant habitats in the U.S.—by replacing small, diversified farms with large monocultures; eliminating edge habitat; draining wetlands; burning, spraying weeds, and mowing roadsides; applying chemical fertilizers and herbicides; overgrazing; and moving up hay-mowing dates, which can destroy late nests. Management strategies include providing nesting cover, reducing nest losses, and providing adequate winter cover. The Conservation Reserve Program, funded by the Farm Bill, has helped conserve and restore habitat for Ring-necked Pheasants.
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