
First off, apologies for the image quality - it was taken with a phone through binoculars!
I spotted this guy today at a wetland reserve and the colouring struck me as being unusual. He was a much lighter colour than a typical pheasant, similar to a golden cocker spaniel. The head colour was also unusual in that the dark shimmer green was almost totally substituted for a slightly dark shade of the brown body colour.
My initial thoughts were that this was captive bred escapee but this isn't really based on anything other than a guess.
Could this colouring down to a genetic anomaly, hybridisation or something else? Or is there anything stage about it at all!