Turkey Point ON. March 24 2020. I can readily bring to mind four European bird species introduced into North America: House Sparrow, European Starling, Rock Pigeon and Ring-necked Pheasant, there may be 1 or 2 more; the first three are bog-common. The pigeon probably got here as a domestic food source for early farmer settlers, and we’ve probably all heard about the 19th Century meddler who thought the common people of America would remain intellectually and morally impoverished unless they knew the birds of Shakespeare. So, the story tells how he imported and released European robins, chaffinches, bullfinches and nightingales (among others) into New York’s Central Park; they didn’t all survive, not by a long shot, and what we’re left with are the highly successful ones, starlings and sparrows.
But the Ring-necked Pheasant is a different story, it is originally a bird of Asia and is probably one of the most semi-domesticated of all bird species. It has been widely introduced across the continent for hunting and is commonly raised in captivity until grown when it is released. Those that escape the shotgun barrage struggle to survive in our climate, it is not common in Ontario and perhaps never was, other than very locally and periodically. Like all birds, pheasants need the right landscape and habitat to thrive, they need scattered mixed open fields punctuated with woodland and scrub, dense winter cover is especially important. As if hunting wasn’t challenge enough, today’s changes in agriculture, moving towards large monoculture practices, don’t help pheasants.
Well, today my wife and I took time away from Covid 19 and drove to a landscape of extensive marshes on Lake Erie’s north shore. March is when ducks and other waterfowl start heading north and I was keen to see what had blown in from the south. It was time well spent and for a while I wondered if we’d actually encountered every, reasonably possible, duck species in Ontario. But no we hadn’t, we missed Wood Duck, and both Blue-winged and Green-winged Teals, but we did enjoy long studies of glorious, breeding-plumaged Northern Pintails, Gadwalls, Northern Shovelers, American Wigeon, Canvasbacks, Redheads, Lesser Scaup, Ruddy Ducks, Mallards, Ring-necked Ducks and more.
As we were making our way home I was mulling over whether Ducks in General had been my collective Birds of the Day, or was it the handful of Sandhill Cranes, or maybe the Common Grackles in streams many hundreds strong who, having crossed the lake, were swarming north to find their summer place. We were following a picturesque wooded lakeside road when Ruth exclaimed, “Pheasant!” And there, at the roadside, a rather lovely, male Ring-necked Pheasant, My Bird of the Day.
There’s a little more to this, a bit of history. This is not the first time for a pheasant in these posts. Eight years ago (!) in a bizarre encounter I almost literally ran into a Golden Pheasant. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief. Read about it here.
