Author:  David R. White, Naturalist 

I suspect that probably 99.9% of the pheasants you might see are incubator hatched, & in their early life, reared in a high stocking density environment with a plentiful supply of foods & an absence of predators. This is very different from when living in the wild. During spring, the cock pheasants who have survived the winter shooting season become territorial. When equally matched cock birds encounter each other there can be frequent fights over nearby hens. On the other hand, fighting among hen pheasants is extremely rare. When I saw this I was intrigued.

The intensive rearing of these chicks gives them no opportunity to learn any skills from their parents. I suspect this is likely to result in many of their subsequent breeding attempts to fail, particularly due to predation of their eggs or young chicks. Its not uncommon to find predated pheasant egg shells [see attached shot ]. Gulls or corvids the likely corprits.

One year, a pair of pheasants did successfully rear 4 of their chicks in the Lower Otter Valley. There proved to be three hens & a cock bird. It was among these young hens that I saw the fighting. The confident dominant hen was always prepared to aggressively fight among her siblings for the best of the available foods. This could be normal behaviour for wild bred birds. This behaviour is probably absent in captive reared birds due to plentiful food supplies available during their early life.

All young pheasants have camouflage plumage, the same as adult hens. When the young cock birds reach maturity, they start to moult into their attractive adult plumage. They do look rather odd at this time.. The plumage. They do look rather odd at this time.. The 4th chick was such a bird & t