: pheasant , Most People Don’t Know These Pheasant Facts ,
When it comes to pheasants, especially from a UK perspective, the first thing id like to speak about is their history and current status in the Country. Pheasants are not a native species and were first brought to the UK from Asia around 100AD. This was by wealthy romans, who kept the birds around their villas for eating. However, after the fall of the roman empire, evidence suggests that pheasants died out only to be reintroduced by the Normans after 1066AD. It seems that pheasants have remained in varying numbers in the country since then, and whilst they do have a self sustaining population that breeds in the wild- this is heavily supplemented by captive reared birds that are released every year to be shot. Somewhere between 35 and 46 million were reared and released last year alone.
Whilst pheasant are often looked at as one species- which is the common pheasant, a lot of research has been carried out in recent years to see if this is actually the case- and it turns out, it probably isnt. Genetic studies of pheasants from around the world have identified 8 distinct lineages. These have been mixed with one another by people and although each of them may have represented a separate species- the researchers were only willing to describe three species when they published their results. There are physical differences between each of them- but if I went too far into that, this video would be far too long.
I always think of pheasants as rather slow flying birds- and I may have actually said that in a previous video featuring them, but it turns out they are quite fast over short distances. They have an average flying speed of between 35 and 48 miles per hour but can reach 60 miles per hour if they are alarmed or being chased. Most of the time, pheasants prefer to run instead of taking flight, and they can reach 10 miles per hour on the ground- which is faster than the average persons running speed.
On average, less than a third of the pheasants that are released each year in the UK are actually shot, and whilst some captive reared birds do survive, most of them dont. One of their biggest killers is cars, but they are also easy prey for a lot of native predators. The list of animals that will hunt them is long, but includes foxes, buzzards, badgers, stoats and weasels and the number of species that feed on roadkill pheasants is even longer. This does mean easy food for lots of native animals, but it has a knock on negative affect. In areas where Pheasants are reared, predator and scavenger numbers are often inflated, creating higher pressure on native prey species.
Whilst pheasants are pretty vulnerable- they do have a couple pf adaptations to help them avoid getting eaten. One of the most obvious, is only applicable to females and young birds, and that is there brilliant camouflage- pheasants often rely on this and instead of instantly fleeing from potential danger, they’ll sometimes drop low into vegetation and try to hide- only bursting to life when they think their cover is blown. Despite their apparent blindness to approaching vehicles, with eyes n the sides of their heads, pheasants have brilliant peripheral vision. Females can see more than 310 degrees around them and males around 290 degrees- all without moving their heads.