A few pics of my birds

Preston1, those are tough looking pheasants! I thought they were Sichuan at first. They may be crossed Afghan/Sichuan:confused: Either way, what a great looking bird!

I have a video of various white winged pheasant breeds in a pen. They are always on edge and looking around for predators despite being pen raised. There's a noticeable difference in alertness between White winged breeds and the traditional Ring neck breeds.
 
1pheas4, the pheasants in the pictures are probably only 85 to 90% White-Winged (Bianchi) pheasants. But that's okay, his objective is not to have pure stock for show, but to establish a wild and predator wary, alert, self/reproducing agile wild population of pheasants.
The photos on your "Focusgruppe" The True Pheasant website are closer to pure Bianchi or White Winged pheasants. Note on that True Pheasant Website the size and shape of the Bianchi pheasants, they are aerodynamically designed to fly fast and escape predators.

The reason the white winged pheasants are so wary and alert is because they have been chased by wild cats, jackals and raptors for thousands and thousands of years, alertness is deeply imprinted into their gene pool.

No Sichuan or Strauchi pheasant genes here (in the white winged photos above). The Sichuan or Strauchi pheasant is in the Gray-Rump family, like the Chinese Ring-necked pheasant (sometimes called the blue back). Note the photo of a wild Sichuan (strauchi) pheasant below, taken in the Sichuan province of China, the Sichuan has identical marking of the ring-necked pheasant but no ring. Now there is an intermediary section of China where both subspecies share the same geography, (the hens of both subspecies are identical) but you will see a variation in the size of the ring in the roosters, move 3 or 4 hundred miles south of the intermediary area and the ring completely disappears among the wild roosters, see photo below:

http://www.birdforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=228616&=1258346624

People have been thought for years that wild pheasants can't survive and reproduce down south because of heat or the lack of calcium but all of that is false.
 
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Great post Preston. There's so much to the pheasant gene pools I had know idea even existed. Thanks for sharing what you know with us. :)

Also, as far as alertness goes, do you see the same high levels of alertness in the Strauchis ("Sichuan") as in the Bianchi ("Afghan Whitewing") pheasants? It seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong) the Bianchi's are more alert than the Struachis. :confused:
 
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