The Case of the Lovelorn Pheasant, the Naked Governor, and Some Birds Just Trying to Survive in Vermont
His love calls are two rapid piercing squawks that sound, aptly, like “RUT, RUT! But the intended messaging was: Hey, hey LADIES! Check me out. I’m a study in avian studly-ness. If you’re a female pheasant with a pulse, I would like to give you a lovely batch of chicks. If you look anything LIKE a female pheasant, let’s talk.
That last part bears explaining. This bird is a male ring-necked pheasant I’ve come to know the past year. It’s spring now and in the past few weeks he’s been wantonly advertising for a mate on our front lawn. His customary winter habit of extreme wariness has given way to a case of blinding, bird-brained desire -- a desire desperate enough to court a neighbor’s free-range domestic chickens and turkeys who wander down the hill to our place for spills under the birder feeders.
This lusty male, to me, is an endearingly goofy character. He’s an exotically dressed prince for these parts. In one display, he inflates his chest to cartoonish proportions, slowly turning to show all his bodily assets – a Mr. Universe dressed by Lady Gaga’s stylist. In another display he simply does a thunderous beating of wings without doing much else, or he’ll perform a lordly back-and-forth strut.
When he takes a break, he’ll make a low glide to the broad sheltering skirts of a large pine tree in the field downhill from the house, his winter hangout. Eventually, he’ll follow the tree line back to the yard, rock-hopping his way along a stone wall, stopping to squawk every few steps.
Last summer my family and I were treated to the sight of a line of pheasant chicks following Mom down our driveway and later watched the chicks grow. A popular game bird, they are plentiful elsewhere in North America, even places just as cold. But they aren’t native to Vermont. People raise them and release them from time to time to amuse hunters. If they aren’t shot, the birds do not usually make it through the winter. They can’t access food as well in this environment. Unfortunately, the birds also have many natural enemies here on our rural hill including fox, hawks and coyotes. And cars.
Early one morning I came upon a dead pheasant lying in the road, her neck at an impossible angle. Fresh road kill. I stopped the car to pick her up. The body felt softer than a hank of fine spun silk in my bare hands. At such close range, I was able to notice the detail in the lovely graphic patterning of her taupe, cream and black feathers. It clicked that I had seen similar motifs in Native American pottery and basketry. Coincidence, maybe.
I took the body to a nearby patch of weedy field and left it there. Better that she become a scavenger’s meal of pheasant-under-grass than a desecrated blob of pheasant pulp in the road. Better for me, anyway.
Since last winter I began leaving handouts of a recommended pheasant food to see them through. I’m not intending to bait a wild animal or cultivate an ill-advised dependence. It’s just a little boost for some birds doing their utmost to survive against odds they didn’t sign up for. I’m technically breaching a rule by feeding them just now, because Vermonters are sternly advised by the Department of Fish & Wildlife to stop feeding wild birds in the spring. Any wild birds. Because of bears. They’ll come to your feeder and raise havoc and they won’t go away. We’ve never had a bear here. Possibly because we have two very big dogs. But as I spill some seed on the ground, in my mind’s eye I see an imaginary game warden, standing legs akimbo, arms crossed, looking first at my feeder and then throwing me a weary, tight-eyed look.
But then he seems faintly amused. It’s as though he’s suddenly recalling a nearby Montpelier resident who recently heard a ruckus in his back yard, saw a couple of bears at his bird feeder, and, without a stitch of clothing on, ran out to chase them off. And then, one off the bears chased him back to the house. The star of that drama was actually the Governor of our fine state (at the time), Peter Shumlin. It was actually he himself who related this story to members of the media, emphasizing that he normally slept in the buff. So there was nothing untoward about his being naked in his back yard. He had the good sense to laugh at his own folly. But the poor sense to alert the media, who used said folly to make an illustrative case-in-point about spring bird feeding.
I will take my chances with bears and game wardens in an effort to level the odds against the struggling pheasants. I enjoy watching all our winged visitors. In the warm months our mowed lawns and acres of bush-hogged fields contain an abundance of wild, seedy, polleny, wormy, buggy goodness. A feast for wild birds. But the insects can be interesting in themselves. I’m reminded of one warm, perfumed evening last summer when the back field was so densely spangled with fireflies that it had a stupifyingly magical effect. Like a flashmob convened not with cellphones, but pheromones.
I recently saw one other male pheasant down the hill who appeared to be keeping close company with two females. It’s said that male pheasants will lay claim to a private stock of hens during the breeding season. If that were the case, it left an even more dismal dating pool for our lonely boy.
It seems hardly fair to introduce animals into the wild here that aren’t expected to make it on their own. But consider that Vermont’s reintroduced wild turkeys have thrived in great part due to farms where they can get access to manure piles, crop field gleanings and loosely protected animal feed. Take a clever bunch of Great Escapees, add the prospect of milder winters, and throw in some supplementary pheasant chow, and who knows what feats of adaptation may occur. In the end, Nature will decide what is natural.
End note: This morning I saw that a female pheasant had at last come to check out our boy. She kept reasonably close to him, head down, pecking at this and that, possibly making known her interest but studiously not looking at him looking at her. It looked promising. □
This write-up has been edited from the original in 2012 for clarity and other things. The incident of the naked governor was also in that year.
