Pheasant surprise MN research

[Lee Borgersen]

   Pheasants choose farms over grasslands, surprising MN researchers.

10/16/16


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Female pheasants have surprised researchers by running into corn and soybean fields — but not just for the crops.

Female pheasants, Minnesota researchers have found, often abandon natural grasslands — presumably prime habitat — and lead their young into corn and soybean fields early in their lives to feast on worms and grubs to satisfy their protein-hungry appetites.

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“We’re trying to look at habitat selection and survival on public lands, so we’ve been surprised by the extent to which the hens go straight for private lands — agricultural lands,” said Nicole Davros, upland game project leader for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Davros is heading up a multiyear study in which researchers affix radio collars to pheasants and track their movements.

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The observations could have implications for how policymakers seek to manage the landscape amid long-standing tensions between farmers and environmentalists across a wide swath of Minnesota. In addition to being one of the state’s most popular game birds, ring-necked pheasants are seen as an indicator species for a range of concerns, including water quality and honeybee and monarch butterfly populations.

Pheasants are on the minds of tens of thousands of Minnesota hunters this weekend as Saturday marks the opening day for pheasant hunting. An important factor of the tourist economy for the southwestern part of the state, legions of hunters — many from the metro area — will don blaze orange, dogs in tow, and fan out among the patchwork of fields that were once a sea of prairie before European settlement. Pheasants are not native to Minnesota, but for a century the birds have largely replaced the niche once occupied by prairie chickens and sharptail grouse, whose numbers have dwindled amid human changes to the landscape.

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Among those toting shotguns will be Gov. Mark Dayton, who will host the Governor’s Pheasant Opener in Montevideo. Dayton began the annual event and has used pheasant hunters and their associated conservation groups as sounding boards and champions for a number of policy initiatives. Dayton’s plan to require farmers to plant year-round vegetation along waterways — “buffer strips” — emerged from a “Pheasant Summit” he convened two years ago.

PHEASANT OUTLOOK AND CROPS:
That pheasants like cropland in the summer and fall isn’t new. The calories contained in corn and, to a lesser extent, soybeans — the two dominant crops in Minnesota — seem an irresistible cornucopia to the birds, when compared with wild grains. In addition, the crops, especially standing corn, provide cover for the generally ground-dwelling birds from aerial assaults by hawks, owls and other raptors, who prey on them.

Hunters in the know are well aware that the quality of the opening day hunt can depend on whether nearby crops have been harvested. This year, harvest has begun across much of southern Minnesota — prime pheasant range — but standing crops remain plentiful, as wet soils have prevented combines from entering some fields.

Overall, recent mild winters appear to have helped Minnesota’s population, and the outlook for the season is improved over last year. The state’s pheasant index — gleaned from annual roadside wildlife surveys — is up 29 percent from last year. But it remains 48 percent below the long-term average. Meanwhile, the amount of grasslands in the pheasant range increased by nearly 62,000 acres. That pause in the trend of declining grasslands is the result of new lands acquired via sources such as the Legacy Amendment offsetting the decline in private lands enrolled in federal conservation regimens like the Conservation Reserve Program.

‘HENS KNOW THE LAND’
In the spring, farm fields that today feature standing corn are reduced to black dirt, devoid of cover and, many critics contend, much life. Corn and soybeans are annual plants; once harvested, they’re dead, and farmers often turn the soil before the following year’s planting. Critics of modern farming practices pejoratively use the term “nuked” to describe the land after pesticides and herbicides are sprayed.

Yet, Davros and her team have observed, about half of all hens promptly lead their chicks directly to those fields as soon as the chicks can leave the nests (which are always in grasses), even when the fields provide little cover because crops are young or have yet to be planted.

“These hens know the landscape better than we give them credit for,” she said. “What is it private lands have that public lands don’t? I tend to think that food is not limiting in grasslands. So it’s not necessarily food. If pheasant chicks are running around trying to catch bugs, they can’t do that in really tall grasses.”

The timing of pesticide application could be important, Davros said. “Pesticides aside, when we were in a soybean field for several hours before the farmer sprayed pesticides, and there was plenty of food — almost exclusively bugs — for the chicks. Maybe raccoons and skunks (which eat pheasants) don’t move deep into those fields.”


WHAT KILLS PHEASANTS?

Biologists have long believed that hunting — only males (roosters) can be shot in most states, including Minnesota — has little effect on the overall population of pheasants, which usually don’t survive longer than three years in the wild.

Available habitat and winter severity are believed to be the major drivers of pheasant numbers. Unknown are the effects of predators, including coyotes, feral cats and raptors — populations whose numbers have generally increased over the past 50 years. Also unknown is the extent to which people kill pheasants with mowers and other heavy equipment, as well as cars.

“The evidence we have so far from our first two years is that very few hens die during nesting seasons,” Davros said. “There’s some evidence that some birds drop their scent during nesting, so maybe that’s why predators aren’t actually a problem. The hens just sit on their nest and are safe, as long as the weather cooperates.”

Mowing of roadside ditches — believed to be a significant provider of pheasant habitat in areas dominated by modern farms — is banned during nesting season. Hunters have long contended that aggressive mowing, especially when done earlier in the year than state regulations permit — kills too many birds. Early findings are unclear on that, Davros said. In one group of 37 birds, only one was lost to roadside mowing, while several were hit by cars.

“I purposely chose areas near public grasslands, so our pheasants have other places to go,” she said.

Some hens were killed when farmers harvested alfalfa fields during nesting, Davros said.


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