CONSERVATION & ECOLOGY


EUt libus, con praecestrum re sit estios solupit la cus audae expeliae nonsercipis erum estotas et magnatiat. Omnisqu iasitat iisitatem ero optaquiscita vellabo. Berae voloreperit volese volorumqui que conesequas ipictibuscil int aut oditibeaquis


as table birds. The Romans left recipes and accounts of how to keep them in captivity. Whether or not pheasants were established in Britain in Roman times is open to debate. There are Romano-British mosaic pavements from about the fourth century AD which appear to show pheasants, but these may have been copies from Europe. Even if they had spread to this country, they were certainly not common during the Dark Ages. More birds were almost certainly brought over by the Normans some time after their invasion in 1066. There are accounts of ‘cocks of the wood’ being served at banquets although these were very probably black grouse - it is impossible to tell. The next definitive evidence is the Sherborne


Missal, an illuminated manuscript depicting a pheasant in the margin which was probably produced around 1400. After this, evidence starts to become more frequent. They were definitely breeding in the wild at the end of the 1400s, when their nests were protected by royal decree. Their range also began to spread, with records from Scotland and Ireland in the 1600s and slightly later in Wales.


Current practice


Game shooting is a thriving activity in the UK, worth over £2 billion each year with 83% of shoots relying on hand reared pheasants released into the countryside to supplement wild stocks. For over 100 years, pheasants,


A recent BASC survey


showed that gamekeepers manage around 7.3 million hectares of land in the UK - an area almost the size of Scotland


PC December/January 2019 127


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