Pheasant ID? (1 Viewer)

[Adey Baker]

Any ideas on this darkly attractive Pheasant - more compact in size than Common Pheasant.Coming to a feeder on woodland edge this morning.

Weather very gloomy at the time, still raining. Exposure was only 1/50th sec at F5.6 even with ISO 1600. I was leaning on the car's window frame to get steady exposure and couldn't frame it any differently to get more of the bird in (most of it was behind a fence post, anyway!

TIA

 

[White*Kite]

That's a female melanistic Common Pheasant - dark form of a Common Pheasant. I see them quite a lot, the males are lovely too. =)

 

[Adey Baker]

That's a female melanistic Common Pheasant - dark form of a Common Pheasant. I see them quite a lot, the males are lovely too. =)

Thanks White*Kite - I found it difficult to decipher from a couple of my books whether the melanistic form was actually smaller than 'normal' forms (and the 'old' Collins fieldguide does the usual trick of half-hiding the female behind the male!)

 

[White*Kite]

I've noticed that too with the Collins guide! Pheasants can be quite variable in size anyway, and I must admit that a couple of the female melanistic ones I've seen have been a little smaller than the 'normal' ones they were associating with. However I've also seen many birds around the same size.

Beautiful photo btw! =)

 

[Adey Baker]

I think mine was within the size range quoted, being at the lower end. It was a really attractive bird, even in the gloomy conditions of yesterday morning before the sun decided to shine.

When I was a lad in the 1950s, one of the things that got me interested in wildlife was finding a Pheasant (and its nest) from the other end of the spectrum, a pure white one - coincidentally, the field in which I found it is exactly the same one in which I photographed a male Pheasant this morning, which I've just uploaded into the gallery: http://www.birdforum.net/pp_gallery/showphoto.php/photo/87086/sort/1/size/medium/cat/500/page/1