{"id":21098,"date":"2014-01-02T06:45:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T13:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=21098"},"modified":"2014-01-02T06:45:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T13:45:29","slug":"some-very-odd-looking-pheasants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/02\/some-very-odd-looking-pheasants\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Very Odd-looking Pheasants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ring-necked Pheasants are relatively common in my area and I normally see very little variation in plumage color in them – males look like males, females look like females and that’s about it.\u00a0 But twice I’ve photographed some very strange-looking birds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ring-necked<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Most folks know what they look like but here’s a couple of reminders.\u00a0 This is the male during winter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ring-necked<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

And here’s the female.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen many thousands of pheasants in Utah (and Montana) over the years and only twice have I noticed significant variations in plumage from what you see in these first two images.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"pheasant<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/10, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The first one was on 3\/15\/10 when I photographed this strikingly colored pheasant (at least I\u00a0think<\/em> it’s a pheasant but it sure has a sharply curved bill)\u00a0near the entrance to the Antelope Island causeway.\u00a0 I believe the bird to be a female and she hung around the area for several days (image is full frame so I had no cropping\/composition options).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"pheasant<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

My second “unusual” pheasant was this male, photographed at Farmington Bay three days ago.\u00a0 The bird was foraging in the snow with a mixed group of “normal” Ring-necked Pheasants (and yes, I clipped the darn tail!).<\/p>\n

I suppose it’s possible that either or both of these atypical pheasants are genetic anomalies of some sort but perhaps it’s more likely that the dark female is another species of pheasant (imported and escaped from captivity) and the male is a hybrid of some sort as it has at least some recognizable Ring-necked traits.<\/p>\n

I’m aware that in some areas of the country (especially the Midwest?) a variety of pheasant breeds are imported and\u00a0raised for release on game farms (a sore spot with me) for “sportsmen” to hunt\u00a0so it may not be unusual to see a variety of plumage colors in those states.\u00a0 But around here it’s definitely out of the norm and these two birds certainly got my attention.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ring-necked Pheasants are relatively common in my area and I normally see very little variation in plumage color in them – males look like males, females look like females and that’s about it. But twice I’ve photographed some very strange-looking birds.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5,334,630],"tags":[31,397,137,1813,179,211,562,1812,560],"class_list":["post-21098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-ring-necked-pheasants","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-farmington-bay","tag-female","tag-game-farms","tag-hybrid","tag-male","tag-phasianus-colchicus","tag-plumage-colors","tag-ring-necked-pheasant"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/ring-necked-pheasant-4221-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5ui","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}