You have seen what's going on in Sweden now let's head westwards across the "Pond" to my birding friend Peter Thoem in Ontario, Canada. Peter lives in Burlington, south of Totonto, and I had the pleasure of his company when we were in Toronto for four days back in May 2018. Emigrating in his early twenties from Brockenhurst in the New Forest, once we really gt to know each other, I having spent most of my formative years in Southampton having moved from Wales in the late forties, it seemed we had a few mutual friends and contacts. These past five or more years I have enjoyed receiving regular emails from Peter by way of his personal blog, "My Bird of the day" and they always contain lots of interesting background information. Below find a copy of his latest effort received this morning.
Ring-necked Pheasantby Peter Thoem
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But the Ring-necked Pheasant is a different story, it is
originally a bird of Asia Asia and is probably one of the most meddled-with 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 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 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.
Lesser Scaup Aythya affinis about to dive |
Gone! |
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 Crane, or maybe the Common Grackles
in streams of hundreds who, having crossed the lake, were swarming north to
find their summer place. We were
following a 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.
Golden Pheasant Chrysolophus pictus |
I trust that you have enjoyed reading Peter's
report as much as I have and very many thanks to Peter for permitting me
share his experience and photographs with you.
Hopefully, in these time of little birding activity in Spain, perhaps I
can bring more active reports to readers from external destinations where birding
is still possible.
Footnote re the Golden Pheasant
Is the Golden Pheasant now extinct as a
wild-breeding species in Britain? The
following extracts were produced by “Bird Guides” just a month ago in February
2020:
There are still sporadic reports, mainly of
individuals, in and around the Brecks at largely unconnected sites. Many
of these presumably relate to released birds, probably in small numbers, on the
many shooting estates in the area. A couple of Suffolk sites, south of
Thetford, are perhaps the final places in Britain where self-sustaining (or
formerly self-sustaining) populations of Golden Pheasant can be found. It of
course remains possible that these birds are supplemented by releases. Females
have been seen too, with reports as recently as 2019, but numbers of both sexes
have tailed off, even though recent sightings have taken Golden Pheasant into
the 2020s as a British bird. Excluding
isolated releases, any British self-sustaining population of Golden Pheasant
could be as small as 20 or more individuals.
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