Ring-necked Pheasant

About the Ring-necked Pheasant

Few birds anywhere outdress a rooster Ring-necked Pheasant: an iridescent green head with red face wattles, the namesake white collar, and a body of burnished copper and gold trailing a long, barred tail. Hens are mottled buff-brown - drab only until you appreciate how completely they vanish in grass.

Pheasants are natives of Asia, brought to North America in the 1880s and now woven into the farm country of the northern plains. In Texas they are a Panhandle specialty, living among the grain fields, playa lake margins, and shelterbelts of the High Plains - the state's little slice of pheasant country.

They are birds of the ground, running powerfully and flushing in an explosion of wingbeats and cackling only when pressed. In spring the roosters crow from field edges - a hoarse two-note "kok-cak" followed by a whir of wing-drumming.

Panhandle pheasant numbers ride up and down with farming practices, cover, and weather, but a rooster standing in winter stubble against a blue norther sky remains one of the great sights of the Texas High Plains.