Golden Pheasant no more? (1 Viewer)

[Mono]

Newly published study of Golden Pheasant in the UK concludes "...therefore can no longer be considered to be truly naturalised as of 2023."

Discerning the status of a rapidly declining naturalised bird: the Golden Pheasant in Britain - Biological Invasions

Whilst many introduced non-native plants and animals become naturalised or even invasive, others fail to persist. Golden Pheasants (Chrysolophus pictus) have occurred in multiple regions outside of their native China, with the largest populations establishing in the United Kingdom. Now very rare...

link.springer.com

 

[Steve Lister]

Author Will Smith has summarised the main points nicely in a Twitter thread

 

[Phil Andrews]

Author Will Smith has summarised the main points nicely in a Twitter thread

References to trail cams and displaced feathers to prove an ongoing presence but they forgot one vital piece of evidence ....

FRESH PRINTS!!!

 

[dwatsonbirder]

References to trail cams and displaced feathers to prove an ongoing presence but they forgot one vital piece of evidence ....

FRESH PRINTS!!!

Don't you mean double knocks and kent calls Phil?!

I've wondered about the validity of the Breckland population (at least at a local level) ever since I saw about 50 in a release pen on the Hilborough estate near to my parents house in (I think) 2008. Despite several large roads and an MoD training area, it isn't too far from there to Thompson. Lucky I saw them in the late 90's at Wayland Wood I guess, unlikely to see them in their natural range any time soon.

 

[Andy Lakin]

What kind of numbers were there around the country when numbers were at their peak?

 

[Mono]

Pre-1981 it was legal to release then into the wild, so it's very hard to tell what were captive hatched and what were wild hatched. The naturalised populations were being "topped up", given supplementary feed and predator control to various extents. So any attempt to gauge the number of actual proper naturalised birds is largely guesswork.

 

[Phil Andrews]

What kind of numbers were there around the country when numbers were at their peak?

It doesn't explicitly say this was the peak population but:
"This represents a significant decline from a 1993 UK population of 1000–2000"

 

[Paul Chapman]

Figure in The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland is between 500 and 1,000 pairs; the figure in The Atlas of Wintering Birds in Britain and Ireland is "perhaps 1,000 - 2,000 birds"; & the figure in The New Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland: 1988-1991 repeats that estimate as "our best guide".

From my reading, the paper is at best very thin save for the results from trapping, camera traps, etc being filled at times with second hand hearsay apparently repeated with approval and almost seeming to parrot points as an agenda.

I was actually warned off reading it by a friend because I was likely to burst a blood vessel. He was unimpressed with its quality. 😀

That said, the conclusion is pretty much unanswerable. That said, I would point people to the three Atlases for a read rather than this paper to think about the causes especially for those familiar with the experience of say searching for the species at Mayday Farm or other sites in the late 80s rather than accepting this paper's suggested conclusions. 👍

All the best

Paul