Common pheasant

Pheasants eat seeds, grain, berries and bugs.

They scratch the ground with their feet and dig with their beaks to find food. Baby pheasants eat mostly insects.

Pheasants are omnivores, which means they eat both plants and animals. They feed on grain such as corn, wheat and barley, weed seeds, green shoots, buds, roots and berries, plus insects, spiders, earthworms and snails.

They find most food on the ground, scratching with their feet or digging with their bills, usually in the early morning and evening. In New Zealand, adults have been seen digging as deep as 8 centimeters. Chicks eat mainly insects.

The diet is broad and seasonal. ADW lists crops such as corn, wheat, barley and flax, weed seeds such as foxtail, ragweed and sunflower, fruits such as wild grape, apple and blackberry, and invertebrates including grasshoppers, caterpillars, crickets and snails. Audubon adds that they eat more seeds in winter and more insects in summer, and that pheasants rarely take lizards, snakes, frogs or rodents.

Foraging is mostly on the ground, scratching with the feet or digging with the bill, mainly in the early morning and evening. New Zealand Birds Online reports adults digging to 8 centimeters and chicks eating mainly insects. In dry habitats, ADW notes, pheasants get water from dew, insects and juicy plants.

The father pheasant makes a loud call, like a rooster.

He flaps his wings fast after he calls. In winter, pheasants gather in groups.

In spring, a male calls with a loud, two-part crow, 'korrk-kok', that sounds a little like a rooster and can carry up to about a mile (1.6 kilometers). Then he whirs his wings in a quick burst. To court a female, he struts in a half circle around her with one wing drooped and his red face patches swollen.

In autumn and winter pheasants gather in flocks of up to 50 birds where there is food and cover. Some flocks are mixed, and others are all males or all females.

Males establish crowing territories from early spring with the loud, double 'korrk-kok' call, which ADW notes is similar to a rooster's and can travel up to a mile, usually followed by vigorous wing-whirring. Studies cited by ADW found that females tend to choose dominant males and prefer long tails, and that ear-tuft length and black spots on the wattle also play a part, while overall brightness does not. In the lateral courtship display the male crosses slowly in a semicircle in front of the female with his head low, near wing drooped and wattle erect.

Outside the breeding season pheasants form flocks of up to 50, mixed or single-sex; Audubon describes small groups of males and larger flocks of females. Most are sedentary, though northern birds may move to escape hard weather.

There are lots of pheasants.

People raise many pheasants on farms and let them go in the countryside. Pheasants need hedges and bushes for cover.

The IUCN Red List rates the common pheasant Least Concern. It is widespread, and in many introduced places people raise pheasants and release them for hunting. In the UK, tens of millions are released every year.

But pheasants also face problems. When big farms remove hedges, bushes, marshes and field edges, the birds are left with less cover and fewer small ponds and wet places. In New Zealand, numbers crashed in the 1890s after ferrets and stoats were brought in and poisoned grain was spread to control rabbits, and they have never fully recovered.

The IUCN assessed Phasianus colchicus as Least Concern in 2025; the global population trend is listed as unknown. Many introduced populations are managed for hunting. The BTO reports that most pheasants in the UK are reared from imported eggs and chicks and that tens of millions are released each year, a rise that has driven a steep increase in numbers since the 1960s. New Zealand Birds Online estimates about 250,000 pheasants in New Zealand, topped up by releases.

ADW names habitat loss as a threat: larger farms remove fencerows, bushes and marshes and favor single crops, leaving less cover and water. Nests are especially vulnerable to predators such as red foxes. Pheasants can also affect other birds; ADW notes they sometimes lay eggs in prairie-chicken nests in North America.