CONSERVATION & ECOLOGY


Common pheasant nest


Pheasants


Cultural heritage W


Old age provides few consolations, but that my loyal Labrador cross Collie, Sidbury, is becoming increasingly deaf has made one aspect of our winter walks more bearable: he has never liked loud noises, so the period between bonfire night and the end of the shooting season has, until recently, been a cause of distress. Pitchcare Technical Manager, John Handley reports


inter walks at the weekend were frequently curtailed by the sound of pheasants being shot; Sidbury would act as if I were beating him,


but it would be my hackles that would rise: “Why can’t I enjoy a walk in the countryside without this insufferable shooting?”, “It’s inconsiderate of them to inflict their sport on everyone within hearing distance” and “What pleasure can they get from shooting a bird that has to be forced off the ground in order to be killed?”


At this point, I have to confess to being a walking cliché: I’m a sandal-wearing vegetarian. A liberal product of the BBC with all the self-inflicted angst and doubt


126 PC December/January 2019


that accompanies such an individual; more inclined to passive-aggressive self- justification than outright confrontation, and my further reaction is to consider the impact upon wildlife generally. So what is actually involved in rearing pheasants to be shot and can it be seen as a positive thing? Pheasants have followed man’s development of farming for over 5,000 years, from their native range across much of China and Asia to the Black Sea, they are now firmly rooted in much of Europe, North America and New Zealand. The Americans call the pheasant the ring-neck, but many species have no white collar so the name does not make much sense outside of North America.


History


The pheasant’s formal scientific name is Phasianus colchicus. Both Phasianus and “pheasant” originally come from the Greek word phāsiānos, meaning “(bird) of the Phasis”. Phasis is the ancient name of the main river of western Georgia, currently called the Rioni. Colchicus comes from Colchis, a reference to the mythical visit of Jason and the Argonauts to the Phasis Valley in Colchis, part of modern Georgia on the Black Sea, in search of the Golden Fleece. On Jason’s return to Greece, he supposedly brought back the first pheasants to Europe, possibly around 1300 BC. The Greeks, and later the Romans, appear to have kept them


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