Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 23:54:47 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rich Dolesh Subject: Re: Prince George's County field trip -- Pheasant MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David, Thanks for the reply. I'll try to track down more info on what gamebirds might be kept semi-domestically in the Pistcataway Park/Nat Col Farm area. Will Cokren is a good contact for the Accokeek Foundation which manages much of the NPS property, and Skip Kaufmann is the farm manager at Hard Bargain Farm. If these places are not keeping any, they would know if any local farmers (there are still a few) have released any pheasants this year,or if they are keeping them in pens. Occasionally, some hunters will get a notion that it would be great to get a population of ring-necked pheasants established locally, and they turn out anywhere from a dozen to a hundred, but few survive till hunting season. Your sighting is late in the winter, and food is becoming scarce for ground birds. This bird was at least hardy. The presence of ring-necked pheasants in Southern Prince George's County, or anywhere in So. Md is somewhat apocryphal, much like the report of the cougar in Clinton. (Yes, there really was a cougar in Clinton a few years ago, so said some reliable witnesses--or was there?) I have talked to a lot of hunters and farmers over the years who had pretty good knowledge of their land and the habits of pheasants. Breeding pheasants were well established in much of Western Md, and fairly common into Frederick County. They have suffered a precipitous decline in that range in the last two decades. However, reports of pheasants south of the Fall line (roughly the N-S route of Rte 95) have always been rare. Why? It is somewhat of a mystery. I still have heard no fully reliable explanation. What is different north and west of the Fall line from south and east? Soils? Minerals? Trace elements? It certainly isn't just food supply or habitat type. As to the primary cause of decline, that is still speculative also. Changes in farming methods contributed, but herbicides and pesticides may have played the greatest part, because even in very good habitat areas, pheasants declined. At any rate, I think it unlikely that pheasants can be established in southern Md. I would be very interested to learn if anybody sees more than one on or around the Colonial Farm or anywhere in the Potomac river bottom. Let's keep looking. Rich Dolesh ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Mozurkewich" To: Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 12:36 PM Subject: Re: [MDOSPREY] Prince George's County field trip -- Pheasant > On Sun, 9 Feb 2003, Rich Dolesh wrote: > > > I am very interested to hear that you saw a pheasant at National > > Colonial Farm. I would be mightily surprised if it was not a > > pen-raised bird that was released, or otherwise escaped from the > > Colonial farm operations, nearby Hard Bargain Farm of the Alice > > Ferguson Foundation, or a local landowner. Does anyone know any more > > about a pheasant came to be at the farm/Piscataway park? > > > > Rich Dolesh > > Rich, > > I too, would like to know the origin of this bird but cannot add much to > what you already know. I saw the bird only in flight in poor light so I > cannot attest to its subspecies. But the bird was not tame -- if it's an > escapee, it's not a recent one. A distant escape may be just as likely as > a nearby one making tracking down its origin difficult. > > We checked the enclosures at the Colonial Farm. There were Turkeys penned > and more exotic species both penned and free-range. I saw no other > Pheasants but cannot swear I saw all the pens. I have not checked Hard > Bargain. Do they keep gamebirds? > > The last Pheasant I saw in PG county, and the last I know of, was on > October 11, 1998. It was at BARC, about halfway between the old sewage > pond and Edmonston Road. If memory serves, it hung around for the Bowie > Christmas count when it was seen one to two miles East of that location, > near what was then called Beck Lake. > > Were Pheasants ever truly established in Maryland or was their decline as > much due to fewer releases as to a change in farming practices? If a > change in farming practices is the main cause, this corner of the county > may offer them a chance having both appropriate habitat and a more > traditional land use policy. > > Dave > David Mozurkewich > Seabrook, PG MD USA > mozurk @ bellAtlantic.net > > ======================================================================= > To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com > with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey > ======================================================================= > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================