Fancy Bird, Nice and Pleasant
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Fancy Bird, Nice and Pleasant
Today’s special animal friend is the Silver Pheasant, Lophura nycthemera. This really pretty bird is native to mainland Southeast Asia and parts of China. Introduced populations are found on Victoria Island in Argentina and on Vancouver Island in Canada. There are 15 subspecies. The largest silver pheasants are about 49 inches long; more than half the length is the tail. The smallest ones are only 28 inches long with a rather shorter tail. Males are bright white with narrow black barring on their backs and tails, and dark underneath. Females are brown on the back and mottled black and white underneath. Males weigh about 4.5 lbs. and females about 2.5 lbs.
The silver pheasant is adaptable to a variety of habitats. In some areas, they live on forested mountain slopes over 3,000 feet in elevation, while in others, they live in grasslands bordering woods at altitudes under 1,000 feet. They roost in trees, especially oak species, of which there are many different ones in Asia.
Their diet includes a wide variety of seeds, fruits, insects, and other invertebrates. Studies of the stomach contents in a population in Guangdong found 64 different types of plants and 30 animal species. Information on their mating practices is sparse. Some researchers have concluded that males are polygamous, while in other populations, they have observed that both males and females are promiscuous. It’s probable that subspecies in different habitats have different behaviors. The average clutch size observed is 6-9 eggs, but a nest of 12 was identified, with all the eggs hatching.
Silver pheasants are a species of Least Concern with a diverse population spread over a wide area. They are raised in captivity. I’m not sure why. The breeders’ websites talk about how pretty they are and their reproductive potential, but they don’t explain the point. Maybe eating? Or maybe you just want to have some because they’re pretty.
Did I mention they’re really pretty? And so is their habitat.
They live up to 12 years.
MarqueG mentioned that a question arose last week about the status of the rock pigeon, identified as "feral" in my survey of pigeon species.
The rock pigeon or rock dove, Columba livia, was domesticated as a source of meat and eggs in the Middle East - Mesopotamia, Anatolia, those places - at last 5,000 years ago. An animal is considered "domesticated," as opposed to "kept in captivity," when the captive population shows significant physical, behavioral, and genetic change from wild populations.
For example, domesticated animals are usually consistently larger than their wild relatives. Because they are fed by people, they often lose the ability to find food for themselves. Except for breeding males, domestic animals are usually less aggressive among themselves than wild animals. They are usually less mobile.
Pigeons were kept as a farm animal for millennia before Europeans discovered America. They were brought to North America as a food animal by European colonists. Some of these pigeons escaped - like horses and hogs did - and established flourishing wild - technically "feral" - populations over the next several hundred years. There are also feral pigeon populations in Europe and Asia.
Other examples of ancient feral populations are the "wild" goats found on Mediterranean islands such as Crete. These goats were brought from the Asian mainland, as domestic animals for meat, milk, and hides, by people more than 10,000 years ago.
Camp anecdote: One of my clothing items that fell in the mud during the storm Wednesday evening was a pair of olive-green pants from the athletic gear section at Walmart. I didn't take them to the laundromat in Marion on Wednesday because I didn't want all that mud in the load. On Thursday, I scraped a lot of the mud off and washed them with a few other items.
All the other items ended up with mud on them, and the pants didn't look a bit cleaner. On Friday morning, I gave them another wash, in hot water with more detergent. Still dirty. "What in the world?" I said. "I can scrape this off with my fingernail!" So I washed the pants in the sink with dish soap and a plastic dish scrubber. That got the mud off.
We all know that the negative electrical charge of clay particles is a critical element in nutrient cycles throughout the biosphere. Maybe there's something about this synthetic fabric that attracts clay with a powerful positive charge. Also, top-loading, no-agitator washers are an idiotic design, obviously engineered by someone who had never done laundry in his life. You might as well put clothes in a bucket, barely cover them with water, and occasionally walk by and kick the bucket.