What a gorgeous bird the Pheasant is!
Pheasant blasting starts on 1 October but I think they’ll be thin on the ground, and in the air, in these parts this year. On my recent journeys around rural Northamptonshire, and raids into Cambridgeshire to carry home loads of blackberries, there seem to be very few Pheasants on the road, squashed or alive, and very few in the fields too. There are some, but not many.
What are Pheasant numbers like where you are?
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Effin’ thousands, as normal. North York Moors.
A bit early to tell but none in the garden recently and we can get up to 10-12 together raiding the bird feeders, and robbing the hen food. Seem to be far fewer in the whole area.
Likewise there don’t seem to be the usual numbers carpeting the tracks here in S Wilts. They have been breeding hereabouts and gangs of them ate all my spinach and chard. I have discovered that they don’t like coriander so next time I’ll sow a mixture.
Very few. It’s not a big shooting area but there is small shoot on a neighbouring farm. I trespass now and then to check on a badger sett and the release pen which is located next to the sett seems unused this year.
Not many in inner S London!
Numbers of pheasants and poults in the Chilterns don’t seem to be as many as in previous years. Say about half the usual number. Appearances can be deceptive however, will continue to monitor.
A mixed picture here with one keeper telling me he had bred and released 25,000 (plus 5000 red legs) on a ca. 5000 acre estate but at another shoot numbers are well down so far anyway….
The keeper mentioned above told me he ‘wasn’t bothered’ with the raptors (buzzards and kites) since the former might take only a max. of 100 (small poults soon after release) in a season and also because he didn’t want to lose his job if caught!
He was much more focused on lamping foxes three times a week and said he’d already shot 20 by late August….but that some other estates regularly kill 200 in a season!
We are not shooting, so no birds released for the first time in probably seventy years, things seem very strange.
As November approaches, i will miss the sound of cock Pheasants at roost, calling from wood to wood in the darkness, one of the great sounds of the British countryside.
It is interesting to see all the game crops, left to their own devices this year, ridden with weeds and seeding themselves, i will start looking round them next month,who knows what birds may
turn up ?.
Numbers are normal for this area ie, far too many.
They drive out and out compete the local wildlife, their feed also feeds the local rats, they dig up potatoes and eat young shoots to the point that I can’t grow anything unless it’s protected and they have (in the past) passed disease onto my hens.
On a more positive note, I’ve now discovered a better way of managing them. 2 or 3 fresh dead pheasants (replenished a couple of times a week) in my small turnip field has taught the local kites to hang about the field and there are usually a couple feeding, this discourages the pheasants and I probably only have half the number (in that field) that there was a month ago!
Rats will clean up what the kites leave
And how do you obtain your dead pheasants at this time of year?
As for ‘Urtica’, here in Cheshire we have several thousand of them again! So, no let up despite COVID-19. We also have at least 1000 young Mallard waiting to be slaughtered and the keeper has erected warning signs along a nearby ‘B’ road advising drivers of ‘Ducks Crossing’! The killing starts here soon and no doubt, as last year, we will have endured 30 days + of shooting. I wonder what weight of lead is annually discharged into the environment on this estate….
Difficult to tell yet although they have certainly released plenty but it may turn out to be less than last year. although we are now getting birds in the garden and round the chickens. They have already had several shoots after the released RLPs.
Going back to Pfeffel’s phibs this 26% of designated land should have the release of non-native game birds and indeed the shooting of native game birds banned on it!
No pheasants next door this year and few on the road the other way. Fortunately they released them after the main road was closed for road works and our wiggling lanes became a 40mph rat run.
Tim, the rats here live on the overwintered Maize cover crop cobs. A look along the hedgerow beside it show it to be full of rat holes. And if its by a wood, look for the squirrel’s dreys, another predator supported over winter in unnatural numbers. If you think grey squirrels are ever in “natural numbers”.
When they plough the maize in April there is an exodus of starving rats over the surrounding countryside. I have seen them in the middle of the day climbing Hawthorns and eating Dandelions in the lawn.
I asked the farm to change from maize and it has change to a brassica based cover crop but left to itself I see it has produced a good crop on Canadian Fleabane this year. An increasing problem here on dry soil, especially this year.
Not many so far in my neck of the Cheshire woods
Loads of pheasants on the Fitzwilliam Wentworth Estate – Rotherham.
We are unfortunate enough to have 3 different shoots and one range within 1 mile of our land. Each winter there are several releases of pheasants and partridges from November to February. The range can operate several stands for 55 hours a week excepting Sundays, Bank holidays and Saturday p.m. Noise blights our well being.
The shoots have developed over the last decade and were never in existence just after the war. Again the noise is a great problem as you never know when it is coming. The farmers gradually pull out hedges to improve the line of fire and beating. Another ploy is to partly gut woodlands where nobody can see and erect barriers all round to contain the birds within a feeding area. The mass release is often less than 2 weeks before a shoot. The organisers can no longer rely on the food chain supply excuse as most of the birds are known to be dumped or burned. The EADT published 2 photographs 20 years ago of 2 lorry loads dumped in Thetford Forest. Then it was cutting the breast off for export. Who wants lead filled meat? Yes lead is sown like corn.
This year has been heaven apart from the range. No major organised shoots have been heard and few birds released. Only 2 weeks to go. Hooray.