Spring foraging behaviour and diet of released pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) in the United Kingdom.

Abstract

Many sporting estates in the UK rely heavily on releases of hand-reared pheasants, Phasianus colchicus, in late summer to provide birds for shooting. However, the breeding success of hand-reared hen pheasants in the spring following their release has been shown to be very poor compared with that of wild hen pheasants. Possible explanations for this are an inability among hand-reared birds to identify natural food items or a shortage of appropriate foods. American literature indicates that, when available, cereal grains comprise an important component of pheasant diet. In this study, monocotyledon leaves constituted, on average, 87% of fragments in faeces collected from hand-reared pheasants in an area of intensive agriculture near Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK, during April-June 1994-1995. In experimental plots where wheat, Triticum aestivum, grains were supplied via hoppers along woodland edges, the mean proportion of monocotyledon fragments declined to 45% and wheat grain husk constituted 45% of all fragments, whereas these proportions were 87% and 0.5% respectively in plots where no supplementary wheat food was provided. Observations at dawn revealed that hen pheasants given supplementary wheat spent less time foraging for food and remained closer to field edges than hens in control areas. The sizes (3-5 ha) of the diurnal 95% harmonic mean home ranges of groups of radio-tagged hen pheasants in the experimental and control areas (n = 24 per area) were not different. The provision of wheat grains, with their high metabolizable energy, appears to enable hen pheasants to obtain their daily nutrient requirements more quickly than birds with an unsupplemented diet.