Monday 11 March 2019

Beware of the "Friendly" Pheasant


Beware of the "Friendly" Pheasant - Intro

Around the  middle of march (early sping in the UK) you may ntoice that pheasants become "friendly" they are not becoming friendly at all. 


I had not seen this behaviour before, and naturally I tried feeding the pheasant and gave it a name. But I had misread the situation the pheasant was becoming territorial. 


I am no expert, I declare this now. But when I came near the pheasant it started making noises which you can hear in the attached video. These could be a warning signal.


Any hoo, about 2 weeks after I shot this video, the pheasant attacked by daughter, it bit here on the finger, and when I heard screams I went see what was happening. The pheasant for repeatedly jumping at her with its talons, and whether the screaming encouraged this, or whether it was because she was bit smaller than me I am not too sure. 


The pheasant was jumping around 80cm to a 100cm from the ground, this would have been easily high enough to to claw our toddler in the face, so we made a concerted effort to show the pheasant who was boss, stciks and kicking etc. and it has not been back. 

So beware the "friendly" pheasant he is not as friendly as you would think!


2 comments:

  1. imported foreign menace. popular with the rich, but dangerous to native wildlife such as the adder.
    imported pheasants are still better than imported cassowaries, though ...
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/14/cassowary-attack-giant-bird-kills-owner-in-florida-after-he-fell

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cassowaries are seriously aggressive. We saw a couple in Australia which literally threw them selves at our van. It was all very jurassic park!

    Our pheasant did return in the end, attacked our toddler, and so was humanly dispatched.

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