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Suitable habitat aids bird’s comeback in region
Jay Delaney, commissioner for the PGC’s Northeast Region, with his dog Hunter, before the start of a wild pheasant flushing survey last week in Columbia County.
TOM VENESKY/the times leader
ROHRSBURG, COLUMBIA COUNTY – As Jay Delaney’s dog Hunter flushed two hen pheasants from a field of switchgrass last week, history repeated itself.
The birds weren’t the pen-raised variety that is stocked by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. They were descendants of pheasants released elsewhere in the area a few years ago.
The wild hen pheasants were born in Pennsylvania, just like those that were plentiful in the agricultural landscape decades ago.
Most of Pennsylvania’s wild pheasants disappeared after their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, but thanks to a joint project between the PGC and Pheasants Forever, they are making a comeback in certain areas.
Farm fields in Columbia, Montour and Northumberland counties are designated as the Central Susquehanna Wild Pheasant Recovery Area, one of four such areas in the state. Pheasants from Montana and South Dakota were released in the area from 2007 to 2009, and last Wednesday a group of volunteers and their bird dogs trekked across the fields in the Greenwood Valley area to see how the population of wild pheasants was doing.
Although pheasants weren’t released in several of the fields, wild birds were still kicked out, evidence that the population is spreading to areas where suitable habitat exists.
The first field of the day – an enormous expanse of tall switchgrass – yielded four roosters and three hens.
Not bad, considering the last time pheasants were released in the area was 2008, and that was more than a mile away.
“These birds moved here on their own,” said Colleen Delong, a pheasant biologist with the PGC. “It’s normal for a pheasant to move one to two miles.”
Or more.
Some of the wild pheasants that were equipped with radio collars were found to have moved as far as five miles. Some even flew over the wooded ridges that surround the north and southern sides of the Greenwood Valley.
But most of the time, Delong said, the wild pheasants that were released a few years ago didn’t stray far, choosing to stay in the area because of its plentiful food and cover.
“The whole idea of us putting them in good winter cover is so they don’t have to move,” Delong said. “That’s why habitat is so critical to pheasants.”
By the end of the day, the volunteers and their dogs flushed 21 roosters and 15 hens in the Greenwood Valley, which is close to the 1:1 sex ratio that Delong wants to see in the WPRA, which is closed to pheasant hunting.
“It’s what you would expect to see in an un-hunted area,” she said. “You want each sex to be surviving equally in an un-hunted area. If they’re not, that means something’s going on.”
Delong and the volunteers conduct several flushing surveys during the winter in the Greenwood Valley and Turbotville area. The work has yielded several positive results.
The birds released years ago have established self-sustaining populations that have grown at the release sites and even spread to other areas.
Most importantly, the presence of the wild pheasants is proof that they can exist again in Pennsylvania.
“The first thing we learned with the flushing surveys is the wild hens can survive our winters, and that’s critical,” Delong said.
The six-year project is now in its fifth year. The goal is to establish a population of 10 hens per square mile within the WPRA. After the 2010 flushing surveys and crowing counts were concluded, Delong said the figure for the Turbotville area is nine hens per square mile while at Greenwood Valley the number is two hens per square mile.
After the 2012 work is completed, data from the project will be presented to the PGC board of commissioners to decide the next step. According to the agency’s pheasant management plan, that could include reopening the area to a limited form of hunting.
“The plan states if you reach 10 hens per square mile, the area would be considered a success and it would be opened to wild pheasant hunting, likely for roosters only,” Delong said. “If the 10 hen per square mile goal isn’t reached after the six years, then it could be reopened for hunting and stocked with pheasants.”
While 10 wild pheasants per square mile sounds like a strong number, it’s on the low end of what used to be present in the state.
Delong said in the 1970s where the habitat was optimal there were 40 to 120 wild hens per square mile. In the secondary habitats, that figure ranged from 10 to 39.
“We’re looking for the low end of the range,” she said.
Schuylkill County resident Tom Kaufman brought his dogs Crawdad and Bailey out to help flush wild pheasants on Wednesday. An avid bird hunter, Kaufman said he’d like to see the areas be open to wild pheasant hunting and he was optimistic it could happen.
“In some of the areas the numbers keep increasing,” Kaufman said. “I think the program is working.”
And that can be attributed to the cover, he added.
Kaufman, who has participated in several flushing surveys, said it seems as if the wild pheasants are reluctant to leave prime habitat.
“They like to stay in the field until the end and then come out all at once,” he said. “They don’t like to leave the cover.”
The last release of wild pheasants occurred in the Central Susquehanna WPRA in 2009. The birds that are being seen and studied today are all wild pheasants that were born in Pennsylvania, Delong said. Some of them have been equipped with radio collars for monitoring.
“We’re actually getting to study our own birds that were born here,” she said. “It will be interesting to see what the survival rates are on the resident hens.”
And it will be rewarding, Delong added, to continue to see wild Pennsylvania pheasants flush from the farm fields again.
“Some of these roosters are absolutely gorgeous,” she said. “But the project actually hinges on the survival of the hens. The goal is to repeat the history we once had in this state with wild pheasants. It’s a restoration of a species that disappeared.”