Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
Predators leave a trail of clues when they swoop on a wild pheasant on the hill, but sometimes the nature detective needs the aid of a camera
It is always encouraging to find a few broods of wild pheasants at this time of year. Their success is heavily weather dependent and they tend to fail in this wet, rainswept corner of Scotland. Even the world’s greatest gamekeepers are stumped by foul, persistently soggy conditions during the breeding season but the warm, dry spring of 2020 has lain in the pheasant’s favour. I have found youngsters at all stages of progress and development over the past fortnight, particularly out on the open hill.
Country folk are often dismissive of the hen pheasant as a mother. They say she’s daft and can’t handle her young, but when it comes to poor weather pheasants are no more or less resilient than their native counterparts. Broods of black grouse and grey partridges can be destroyed by three or four days of incessant rain at the wrong time, and even the tough red grouse can have its youngsters wiped out by cold and rain.
I think it’s unfair to criticise pheasants for their poor breeding successes, particularly if they have been reared in incubators without ever knowing the ways of the world. Besides, like the black grouse and the humble mallard, the female pheasant does all the raising and rearing of her young without any input or support from their father.
Possible raptor kill
Walking out on the open hill recently, I found a large puff of hen pheasant feathers strewn across a small area of rushes and marsh thistle. Sifting through the remains, I found a few fragments of bone and a short length of intestine. Turning nature detective, I began to pore over these clues. A fox would have left no trace at this time of year, carrying off the whole carcass to feed its young. Large gamebirds like pheasants often have their wing feathers and tails bitten off before being handed over to cubs, but none of the feathers had been nipped.
I turned instead to consider the possibility of a raptor kill. We have a wide range of predatory birds on the hill and I have seen young peregrines hunting for starlings around the farmyard. A hen pheasant would be a challenge for a juvenile peregrine but it is not beyond the realms of possibility.
From what I have seen of peregrines, the carcass is usually stripped down to the girdle and wings, and the breastplate neatly exposed. This had been a messier job, demonstrated by the splinters of bone and the fact that the pheasant seemed to have exploded in a shower of fragments.
Puzzling this over, I asked around a number of friends and received a variety of suggestions. It was possible that a raptor might have killed the pheasant and the remains had been munched by a badger.
By sheer accident, I happened to discover the very fresh remains of another dead hen pheasant a fortnight later. All around the completely plucked body
I found that the grass was littered with her chicks. Most were dead but three were still alive. I popped these into my jacket pocket and took them home to my broody hen, but
“The hunter had a beautiful orange eye and talons that gripped the meat like putty”
I also made time to set up a trail camera next to the corpse. I had already begun to nurture a sneaking suspicion regarding the killer’s identity and I felt confident that the culprit would soon return to recover its meal.
When I returned 24 hours later, the camera had captured some extraordinary close-up video footage of a female goshawk pulverising the pheasant’s body into fragments. The hunter had a beautiful orange eye and thick, yellow-fleshed talons that gripped the dead meat like putty.
I have seen goshawks in March and April during their breeding season, but these birds are so secretive and elusive that it is almost impossible to get a good look at one. The mystery had been settled and hair rose up on the back of my neck to realise that a powerful killer has begun to haunt the summer hill. With the odds already stacked against them, wild pheasants now have good reason to be doubly cautious.
Patrick Laurie manages a conservation programme to promote farming and conservation with a particular focus on wading birds and black grouse, and he runs a farm in Galloway.