Bird of the Week: The Ring-necked Pheasant

Beautifu, fascinating - and better with the blood on the inside.

Here on the End Bird Shooting Substack, we’re not only campaigners, we are unabashed bird lovers. So we want to combine writing articles that not only push the case for ending bird shooting but celebrate the birds that would benefit.

In the first post of a new series, we’re highlighting one of the most striking and ubiquitous birds of the British countryside, but one that remains well outside the protections of conservation and subject to cruelties few other species suffer: the Ring-necked Pheasant Phasianus colchicus.

---

Let’s admit it, pheasants are beautiful birds.

Ask most people if they’ve ever seen a Ring-necked or Common Pheasant (more typically known simply as the Pheasant, even though there around 50 species globally, and it’s safe to say the answer will be ‘yes’. They are a familiar - ‘normal’ - part of the UK landscape. Yet Pheasants are not ‘British’ birds.

Technically they are considered a 'naturalised introduced species', and they are actually native to Asia (the genus name comes from Latin phasianus 'pheasant', and the species name colchicus is Latin for 'of Colchis' (modern day Georgia), a country on the Black Sea where pheasants first became known to Europeans). They are only here now because shooting introduced them, and shooting now shovels an astonishing 40 million+ Pheasants into the countryside every year. Just to kill them.

Every bird is beautiful and fascinating in its own way, from the plainest-plumaged of British birds like the Dunnock (the archetypal ‘dun-coloured bird’ which nevertheless has an extremely eventful lifestyle) to the Kingfisher (a ‘flying gemstone’ of electric-blue and orange). We will never (never!) argue that whether a bird should be shot or not depends on how it looks, but on any level Common Pheasants are beautiful birds. Even if many of us barely register them anymore.

Males are dazzling with long, gently arching tails, gleaming green and blue-tinged heads, red facial wattles, and (in most individuals but not all) white neck rings. They are barred bright gold or fiery copper-red and have a confident swagger. Females (like the females of many ‘prey and target species’) are more subtle, camoflauged in speckled shades of brown, tan, and beige alid down in light bending patterns to help them hide while nesting and tending to their chicks. That’s maybe not so obvious when they’re walking across a green pasture or ankle-deep in spring barley (like they are round here right now) but the moment they nestle down against a background of baked earth or sun-dried grasses they almost disappear.

Female Ring-necked Pheasant. Photo by Maddy Weiss on Unsplash

While perhaps not quite ‘Dunnock-esque’, Pheasants do have remarkable behaviours. Males perform surprisingly elaborate courtship displays in spring, giving “an explosive double pitched bark and vigorous vibrating of wings” as the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) puts it. Outside of courtship, they are more cautious, sliding easily through vegetation. We think of them principally as terrestrial, but they are of course capable of sudden explosive flight, an escape response which - ironically - makes them appealing to shooters.

Which is why they are here of course. It almost goes without saying these birds are prized not for any intrinsic beauty or character, but for their explosive take-off and their flight speed. As far as shooting is concerned pheasants are the ideal live target. They are easily-reared, generally able to survive in almost any lowland terrestrial habitat, and they fly fast and high when flushed. No mainstream conservation organisation values them, and few people seem to equate the ‘bird in the field’ with the bird tumbling out of the sky. They have become the ultimate, expendable commodity that anyone with a gun can go out and kill with barely anyone else raising an objection…

Pheasants and Farcical Legislation

Although historically kept in captivity and fattened for human consumption, the Ring-necked Pheasant has become synonymous with private estates and the shooting industry. Each year, tens of millions are purpose-bred for shooting, released into the countryside in late summer and autumn, and shot in staggering numbers during a ‘season’ which runs from 01 October to 01 February.

All of which has led to a legal pecualiarity almost unique to Pheasants. They live in a legislative world entirely predicated first on the demands of wealthy, gun-toting landowners and now on what has become the shooting industry. They are renowned as being one of the only birds in the world to be considered both wild and livestock depending on the time of the year and whether they are inside or outside of release pens.

• When they are kept in captivity and bred, they are legally considered livestock, similar to chickens and subject to the Animal Welfare Act (in practical terms a law entirely dependent on enforcement in an industry that is barely scrutinised at all, but which at least given them some basic ‘rights’ like food and water).

• Once released into the wild they become wild birds, which should mean protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making shooting them illegal without a licence issued by the government for what they consider a ‘good reason’.

• But pheasants (and we normally never use this term as explained here) are ‘gamebirds’, a segregated group of birds subject to an almost two hundred year old Game Act, which lists ‘shooting seasons’ when they can be sold off to pretty much anyone with a gun.

This carefully-maintained and industrialised exploitation not only results in immense animal suffering - both for the shot birds and the ‘wastage’ of unrecovered or wounded individuals - but it also has a significant environmental impact.

Pheasants are relatively big birds with very big appetites. They are omnivores meaning they will eat almost anything (including reptiles and small mammals like voles). Mass releases of non-native pheasants distorts local ecosystems, contributes to declines in invertebrate populations, and disturbs native flora. They compete with native species for food and habitat (scarce resources in ever-dwindling supply). Yet there is no legal limit on how many pheasants estates and syndicates can dump into the countryside - unless the releases are within a special area of conservation (SAC) or a special protection area (SPA) when General Licence 43 is required. Otherwise there are only ‘guidelines’ on numbers that the industry can ignore at will.

Pheasants have increased steeply in abundance since the 1960s, and the numbers being released keeps on going up. The BTO says that during 1968-88, a period when the total biomass (or combined weight) of birds in Britain fell by an estimated 10%, Common Bird Census (CBC) data indicated that Pheasant biomass rose by about 2,500 tonnes - more than ten times more than any other species - fuelled by a concurrent steep rise in the numbers of Pheasants released onto shooting estates. This upward trend has led to the remarkable and often quoted statistic that at the start of the shooting season in September the total biomass of Pheasants in the countryside is well over that of ALL other Britain’s birds combined…

The numbers of Pheasants that survive the shooting season and breed the following year is on the up too. There are probably now a couple of million breeding here.

Male Ring-necked Pheasant. Photo by Wim van 't Einde on Unsplash

Pheasants in a Wilder Britain

None of what we’ve written above is somehow the Pheasant’s ‘fault’ of course. That is squarely on us. Native or not, Pheasants are here to stay and we’d argue that we should embrace that fact. They are undeniably beautiful and interesting birds after all. Even if they weren’t they certainly deserve better than falling from the sky in a hail of lead and whisky fumes. They are, as we wrote at the top of this article, better with the blood on the inside…

So how about we imagine a different Britain where the shooting has stopped, and pheasants aren’t killed for ‘fun’ but are allowed to live full, natural lives. Where they live in sustainable numbers and are part of a rewilded mosaic of woods, fields, and hedgerows where their current impact will not be so extreme. Where they are not associated with gunfire, but celebrated as a natural part of a revitalised and gun-free countryside.

To do that we have to reject a culture that accepts shooting and embrace one of respect, wonder, and guardianship instead. But by doing so, we would not only spare the Pheasant but rediscover some of our own humanity too.

---

Like to help End Bird Shooting/Protect the Wild fund investigations?

Protect the Wild has launched Project Investigation, a fundraising drive to raise £2,500 a month so we can run investigations - including into the bird shooting industry - without compromising our frontline support to monitors. We’re asking 500 people to donate just £5 a month — enough to fund consistent, fearless, high-impact work that exposes cruelty and forces change. If you believe in what we do, be one of the 500 and help fuel this fight.

We’re currently on 450 donors! 90% of the way there!