A very brave Mum and three baby pheasants

Hello everyone. As a new member I wondered if anyone would be interested in something pretty miraculous which happened in my garden last year.

If so, read on.

I have quite a small garden, but am surrounded by fields and I feed all the birds, the year round. I have a few dozen pheasants who come to the base of the bird feeders during the winter months and I always throw them a handful or two of sunflower hearts which they love. The numbers decrease in summer when presumably the females are rearing the young. Last year to my delight, one of my female pheasants had brought three very tiny babies into the garden. I had never seen a pheasant chick before. They were about the size of a new born hen. The mother knew me and I thought it was safe to throw some seed in her general direction. However, for her, that was seen as aggressive behaviour and she attacked me! She landed on my head and flapped her wings against my face, dislodging my glasses and squawking very loudly. She then came down to the ground and circled me making a terrible noise and making herself as large as possible. My heart went out to her. What a brave Mum. It took a few seconds to get away from her because she was circling me and I was afraid to step on her, but I eventually got back into the house. I watched her all day with binoculars from my house and she took her little family from one bird feeder to another and spent the whole day in the garden.

In the evening, it was important that I watered my garden pots, and as I hadn't seen the pheasant family for a while, making as much noise as possible, I went about my work. Suddenly, my phone rang and more or less at the same time, from a hiding place in the flower border some 15 or 20 feet away came this amazing mother, yet again, on the attack. She landed on my head again - such bravery! This time I had to pick up a garden seat and hold it over my head to get back to the house.

Gradually as the days went by she learnt to trust me and I saw those little mousy coloured chicks grow into beautiful male pheasants. I didn't dare pick up my camera and try to photograph them, but enjoyed their daily visits. Even at half their eventual size, they still looked like females, then I noticed tiny changes in colour to their backs and realised bit by bit that they were three males. At 'thrush' size they became very cheeky and the bravest one would come looking for me to find some food. He still does. Full grown (and no doubt having sired a few babies himself) he is in my garden now looking at me through the window while I type! As the dominant male, he must have seen off his two brothers and taken over the territory.

I love all the birds in the garden, but these pheasants I actually get to know and recognise. It is amazing how each female varies in colour from the others. Over the years I have had a pheasant with a damaged leg - he became known as Peggy (from peg leg), and he was able to see off all the other males and mate even though for most of the season he couldn't bear any weight on his bad leg. I have had a female with a crooked beak (called Crooky) who came and ate from a cup of seed so she could get the seed in her mouth. Otherwise she stabbed and stabbed at a piece of seed for ever, but couldn't pick it up. The stories go on forever! Such joy they bring me and as I live on my own and am in quite a remote setting, it is great to go out in the garden and be greeted by so many hungry mouths!

 

 

Here is a photo of Crooky, thanks to doggie - I can now edit posts and add pictures! Progress!

  • Hi doggie, Thanks for your message. I have now found out how to upload photos and have put  a pic of Crooky into my gallery. Checking the gallery this morning, I noticed that I had a message, but hadn't had an email notification. Then I saw your thread. In a way that's a relief for me because as a new user, I keep thinking I am doing something wrong, I didn't realise there was a glitch in the software. Sarah

  • Hi Sarah

      Don't know about the parent being brave I think you are the brave one

       Ray

  • hello doggie (Alan) sorry to bother you on such a beautiful day, but believe it or not i have had to come in from the garden because it is too hot!! I am still working out how to do things. There are many queries, so don't spend too long on this, I realise the site has a few goblins in it.

    You suggest I ad a pic to a previous post. When I go to a previous post, I can find no way of editing it, can you help?

    People use a graphic beside their name which helps others identify them easily. Is that easy to do, I haven't found out how!

    I have tried adding a tag to one of my posts, but the tag doesn't come up in the tags list and if I do a search on the site using the words used in the tag, my post does not come up in the results.

    That'll do for now, otherwise you might stop talking to me. I seem to manage on facebook and a couple of other forums, but this one seems to present a steeper learning curve. Please ignore this if you haven't time (or inclination) I will totally understand. sarah.

  • That's great, thank you so much - you are a star! Am just about to put up a thread with a couple of photos. And add them to the gallery. Fingers crossed.

  • Thanks - I understand now about the tags. I am learning fast (with you help).

  • Hello Sarah (is it?)

    Fascinated to read your story, because I too have pheasants in my garden in the same way.
    However, there is a big difference. My pheasants appear to have no parenting skills whatever.
    The babies trail some distance behind the mother, who takes no notice of them at all.
    The babies don't flap their little wings demanding food, and the mother doesn't even intend to feed them,
    unlike other garden birds, eg blackbirds.
    This morning when alarmed, the mother ran in one direction and the baby in the other. After 5 minutes mother came back to the bird feeder followed a little while later by the baby, but still no interaction.
    I have tried to find information about pheasant parenting, but no luck.