Pheasant

Irish Name:	Piasún
Scientific name:	Phasianus colchicus
Bird Family:	Game Birds

green
Conservation status

pheasant-female-crouching-in-leaf-litter

pheasant-chick-standing-on-stones-next-to-railway

Status

Resident, numbers increase in September due to birds released for hunting.

Identification

A large game bird with long legs and long barred tail. Males and females are very different. The males are distinctive with a bottle green head, with red fleshy head sides. The white collar is only present on the male and may not be present if you happen to see the least common race of the two races present in Ireland. Males are reddish brown and have a very long tail, upperparts which are spotted white and finely marked underparts. Females are very different, they are buff-brown with angular spots on the flanks and fine angular markings on the upperparts, the long tail is a give away.

Voice

Most often heard is the hoarse alarm call when the bird is flushed, which decreases in strength as the bird flies off.

Diet

Eats a variety of foods gleaned from the ground including grain, seeds, green shoots and invertebrates.

Breeding

Nests on the ground. An introduced species from Asia, first introduced in the 16th century. Two races have been introduced to Ireland, but the race from China with its white neck ring has dominated. A game bird, it is raised in large numbers and released into woodland to be shot soon afterwards. Many birds have dispersed far from their release sights and can be found in woodland, farmland, large gardens and parks, where they have become 'wild'. Likes dense cover and can flush up at the last moment when nearly under foot. Roosts in trees. Widespread in Ireland but scarce or absent from parts of the west coast.

Wintering

Some birds may move from higher altitudes, but generally resident.

Monitored by

Countryside Bird Survey.

Native to Asia. Introduced for recreational hunting. Population well established now widespread and very common. Occupying farmland and woodland edge, nesting on ground in dense undergrowth and roosting in trees.

Resident, commonly seen on roads and in suburban zones due to large scale population expansion.

Blog posts about this bird

Garden Birds

'Last Christmas' - Birds in Irish Gardens last winter

There's still time to take part in the Irish Garden Bird Survey!! See here for more details.

If you’re a BirdWatch Ireland member you’ll have already read the results of last year’s survey in your winter edition of Wings magazine. If you’re not a member, please join and support our work! But you can catch up on last year’s Irish Garden Bird Survey results with the overview below. If this is your first year to take part in the survey, don’t worry about knowing every single species that might appear in your garden – just familiarise yourself with the most common ones to start off. If you’re a survey veteran, then see how your garden bird list compares to the national average!

Over 90% of Irish Gardens

The species at the top of the list didn’t change much from previous years. Robin, as per usual, was on top, followed by Blackbird and Blue Tit. Great Tit and Magpie moved up a place each into 4^th and 5^th, thanks to a fall in the numbers of Chaffinch reported. Robins can still be territorial in the winter, so are pretty evenly spread across the country, while our Blackbird population is topped up by hundreds of thousands of migrants from Scandinavia in the winter, hence their high-ranking each year. Blue Tits and Great Tits are pretty ubiquitous too, and Magpies are very effective at exploiting both urban and rural habitats.

80-90% of Irish Gardens

Chaffinch and Goldfinch fell two and three places to 6^th and 10th respectively, since the previous winter, and those declines were greatest in urban and suburban gardens rather than rural ones. On the back of a great breeding season, Coal Tit moved up three places to 7^th place. House Sparrows kept 8^th position, and Starling made it into the top 10 garden birds for the first time in a decade!

50-80% of Irish Gardens

Wren dropped two places to 11^th, while species such as Dunnock (12^th), Rook (16^th), Collared Dove (17^th) all stayed in the same position as the previous winter. When a winter is pretty mild (the occasional storm excluded) we tend to see this stability in the rankings across many species. There was some slight movement for Woodpigeon (14^th), Jackdaw (15^th) and Hooded Crow (19^th), all of which fell one place. The mild weather tends to mean these species aren’t forced to retreat to gardens for food as much as in other winters. Song Thrush increased by around 2% and jumped to places in the rankings to 13^th. Pied Wagtail rose up two places to 18^th and occurred in >7% more gardens than they did on average over the preceding five year period. Despite being very common in towns, cities and shopping centre carparks, they’re actually seen in twice as many rural gardens as urban or suburban ones. Greenfinch continue to suffer the devastating effects of trichomoniasis (make sure to clean your feeders regularly!) and reached a new low for the species in the survey – 20^th place.

20-50% of Irish Gardens

While the above species occur in more than 50% of gardens, you’re in the minority if one of the below appears in your garden this winter: Siskin jumped up 7 places (8%) since the previous year. They usually start to appear in gardens from mid-January onwards, but they were making appearances from late November right through to March in most parts of the country last winter. No other species made such a big jump pup the table! One of the bigger losers was Goldcrest - down 5 places to 29^th, a decrease of nearly 8%. It was a mild winter, and a good breeding season for most species in 2020, so the reason for this isn’t immediately obvious. Bullfinch dropped three places to 24^th, but this might just be due to the mild winter and abundance of feeding options in the wider countryside, as they’re not a bird that visits feeders and so aren’t as associated with gardens as other finches. Other species in the 20-50% band include Blackcap, Long-tailed Tit, Sparrowhawk, Mistle Thrush and Feral Pigeon. Again, not species that tend to avail of bird feeders with any regularity, but species who know how to make a good living in a human-dominated landscape, be it rural, urban or suburban.

Best of the rest

Despite being a non-native species, Pheasants tend to be seen in 15-20% of gardens each year, which is surprisingly high considering they don’t tend to breed well in the wild, so are reliant on being released by gun clubs every autumn. Buzzards moved two places up the rankings and are seen over 15% of gardens each winter. Herring Gulls were in 11% of gardens, Black-headed Gulls in 4%, and 1.3% of gardens had some sort of gull visiting but weren’t sure what species! Great Spotted Woodpeckers are one of the most recent additions to our bird community, and over 4% of gardens had one visiting their peanut feeders (it’s always peanut feeders!) last winter. They’re now breeding in almost every county in Ireland, so expect to see them charging up the rankings table in the coming years. Last year was a mast year for acorns, which meant Oak trees were providing a huge bounty for species such as Jays, and as a result they were seen in fewer gardens than usual (8%, down 1% from the average). This tends to happen every few years. Lastly, Redwing and Fieldfare, our two wintering thrush species, both dropped a bit, thanks again to the mild winter.

See below for the full Top 30 birds in Irish gardens last winter, and their various ups and downs since the previous year. Most gardens record between 10 and 25 species over the course of a winter. Whether you have more or less than that, we still need you do to the survey!

We are hugely grateful to Ballymaloe for their sponsorship and support of the Irish Garden Bird Survey.

For more details about the Irish Garden Bird Survey click here, or download the survey form below.

All News

Garden Birds

Irish Garden Birds 2020 - Collective Nouns for Wild Birds

Group nouns aren’t something we tend to give much thought to. When it comes to large numbers of birds, the word ‘flock’ is a suitable catch-all term. A flock of crows, a flock of finches, a flock of geese – you know what it means. Lots of a similar type of bird together.

As useful a term as it might be, the word ‘flock’ can never capture the mesmerising detail, the almost ineffable wonder that seeing a huge number of certain bird species conjures up when you see or hear them. Whether it’s a large number of Goldfinch with their wings shimmering in the low autumn sunlight as they rise from a stubble field, the deep guttural contact calls of a family of Ravens as they appear out of nowhere over a hill, or the unmistakeable outline of a drawn-out ‘V’ of geese overhead as they chatter upon arrive from their polar breeding grounds, none of that magic is adequately captured by the word ‘flock’. Language is a powerful thing, and I’m sure we’d all agree that we need to do justice to the heart-pounding, soul-enriching sights and sounds of large numbers of some of our most unique birds. Thankfully, some rather enterprising individuals back in the 15^th century decided to rectify that!

The Irish Garden Bird Survey is kindly sponsored by Ballymaloe. Click below to learn about taking part this winter.

Most of the collective nouns below were captured in manuscripts and books dating back to Britain in the 1400s. While these phrases likely had older and more widespread origins than those books, the fact that they were written down at this time means we can trace them back at least that far. See below for some of my favourite group nouns for garden birds we have here in Ireland. These aren’t the only collective nouns out there, and some species or groups have more than one collective noun. Get in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what your favourite one is, or if there’s one you like that we’ve left out! I’ve used the book ‘An Unkindness of Ravens – A book of collective nouns’ by Chloe Rhodes as my source for the below – I’d highly recommend seeking out a copy if this is something you find interesting!