Son of ‘The Pretender’ ..

Day 74 #365DaysWild

Pheasants are released for shooting over the other side of our hedge.

Mark Avery tells us that 43+ millions of this non-native bird are released into our countryside each year with no environmental assessment. Their impact is huge on plants, invertebrates, small mammals and amphibians. The BTO equates this to around 45,000 tonnes of biomass: the combined weight of these Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges. To give this figure some sort of perspective, this is more than twice the combined weight of all of our native breeding birds.

By March the shooting has ended and so the pheasants food is stopped.

The birds become hungry refugees, jumping the hedge and scouring under our bird feeders for discarded seed.

A small number of pheasants survive the winter and an even smaller number go on to breed, usually unsuccessfully.

Each year our garden is a battle ground for competing cock birds as they establish and defend their breeding territories and harems. Each male is identifiable. 

On arrival here we first encountered ‘The General’ who would patrol his preserve like an avian Lord Wellington. Haughty. Arms behind his back. Scrutinising. 

Fast forward and for three years ‘The Warrior’ was lord of the garden, besting all challengers.

Two years ago, a slighter male ‘The Pretender’ was sometimes slugging it out with the main man but always on the losing end.

But last year ‘The Warrior’ himself was ousted and ‘The Pretender’ reigned. Release of pheasants on the farm had been temporarily stopped and ‘The Pretender’ had an unchallenged year.

Pheasants attempts to breed are usually thwarted. Wiley predators like foxes, crows, magpies, buzzards and badgers feast on pheasant eggs and chicks, boosting the numbers of these species. Very few pheasants make it through.

But this year a few have avoided predation and a poult is emerging from juvenile plumage as a male. Presumably son of ‘The Pretender’

‘The Pretender’ himself is still in raggedy moult, bedraggled in the rain. His son is shaping up to be a big, handsome boy.