Birds of a Different Feather…

Idaho Wilderness Grouse

Upland Almanac | Winter Edition | 2025

by Jack Hutson

We had hunted most of the day with only a single covey of valley quail to break the streak of, an otherwise, fruitless search. If our canine companions were suffering from the lack of pheasants, they didn’t show it. Jim followed his rookie Wirehair Pointing Griffon, Josie, to the far-left bank as the tinkling bell on the collar of my tri-color English Setter, Tess, called me along into a basin-like depression. Then, as they entered a swale of CRP grass and thistle, both dogs suddenly showed a spark of excitement.

Legging its way up-slope and into thinner cover, Josie’s rooster lost its war of nerves. Stout wings broke gravity’s grip, lifting it toward the top of the rimmed draw. Its flight cut short by the bark of Jim’s twelve-gauge semi-auto; Josie began her search for an opportunity to retrieve. Meanwhile, nearing the point where tall cover meets stubbled field, Tess was trying to work out the scent puzzle left by an unseen quarry.

The combination of wafting scent and reaching the edge of the tall-grass margin held Tess. Spying the tip of a raised setter tail, I began working through the area expecting, at any moment, the sudden explosion of feathers and clattering vegetation. At the sound of Jim’s distant shotgun blast, Tess began to re-work the situation and spun to a very solid point!

The bird’s strategy was brilliant, the double-back move had worked for a time. Now, the classic stalemate between pointing dog and bird had begun; the clock was ticking! The next move on the rooster’s side of the board. Overcome with a swelling sense of entrapment until, plaintively cackling its alarm, the bird bolted from thick cover into brilliant November skies!

Wait! Were my eyes playing tricks?! It flushed like a pheasant but wore a curious blend of russet and dark chocolate browns. The snow-white ring, from which the term “ringneck” is derived, was barely discernable among the iridescent colors of deep blue, green, and purple that cascaded down from its head. Seemingly black, they splashed across its breast like a plate of armor! The spectacle was enough to disrupt the normal course of action. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the boisterous cackle, longtail, and the hint of a white neck-ring I may have opted to abort the attempt all together! Even still, like a quarterback double-pumping before a pass, recalibrating an attempted shot on a rapidly retreating rooster is seldom ideal. This time, it would be my fortune to prevail.

Tess and I began the frantic search for the very unusual prize. Rooster pheasants are extremely tough, with a well-earned reputation for evading capture. No pheasant is truly yours until safely in your vest! To the setter, it was another opportunity to sift sweet scent and mouth the warmth of feathered game. For me, it was a fantastic, almost mythical, creature that awaited confirming discovery! Of course, it would be Tess to pull the lifeless bird from the depths of tall cover and, with some readjustments, carried it to hand.

More amazing than our brief introduction was the experience of actually holding the bird in my hands. Patches of brilliant color popped and shimmered as I turned the bird in the late-fall sunlight. “Hey, that’s a melanistic pheasant”, Jim declared, returning with tail-feathers protruding from his vest. Jim is a biologist with plenty of background for this sort of thing. Me? I had heard of the term but, didn’t know how melanism came about. And just how common is this morphed coloration in the wild – upland birds, specifically?

Well, melanism, from the Greek melanos (dark-colored), is generally defined as an increased amount of dark to black pigmentation (melanin), in feather and fur. In the high-intellect world of genetic science, this oddity is often associated with mutations of a gene that encodes the melanocortin-1 receptor. This protein is, in part, responsible for regulating melanin pigmentation. To add a bit more head-scratching to my laymen understanding, revised pigmentation doesn’t always present itself outwardly by critters with this genetic anomaly. And, in fact, doesn’t always have to be reflected by darker coloration but, can as well, reflect a lighter color-set. Lastly, there are multiple genetic mutations that can cause darker coloration and these variants seem to be more common among birds.

Going deeper into the weeds, there is scientific evidence that shows there are two main types of color-producing melanin that are determined genetically. One form, eumelanin (yoo-mel-uh-nin), is responsible for black, grey and / or dark brown coloration. The other, pheomelanin (fay-oh-mel-uh-nin), is responsible for warm reddish brown to pale buff colors. Depending on their concentration and distribution within the feather, both melanin’s, together, can produce a wide range of greyish-brown colors. Their distribution is rapidly sequenced by a type-switching gene to develop the kind of blotchy patterns often associated with upland game birds. This all takes place within cells located in the feather’s follicle.

Often considered to be one of several avenues of possibility in the theoretical processes of natural selection, melanism has been observed in a variety of creatures. In birds, studies are beginning to show that melanistic birds may, indeed, differ in more ways than color from the more often accepted norm of the species. These variants can be found in some bird species more often than in others.

In wild populations, once a percentage (often debated) of a population has exhibited a relatively consistent morphed coloration, it can be accepted as a variant within the species. This is demonstrated by the grey/brown/red color variations exhibited by North America’s Ruffed grouse. Often referred to as “phases”, most references site five color variations they consider distinct. There are a few suspected causalities such as the aforementioned genetic anomaly or one of the other genetic variations in patterns or color distribution.

During the domestication of some bird species breeders have purposely developed a large array of color variations. There is every reason to believe that any of these color-morphing conditions can, occasionally, appear in wild populations of birds. In fact, melanistic coloration were sometimes mistaken for completely new species or sub-species. One of the most well-documented of these involved a popular game bird of European origins – the Grey, or Hungarian, Partridge.

As early as the 1760’s, the written records show that a coloration thought to be a unique species of partridge was dubbed Perdix Montana the “Mountain Partridge” of eastern France. There were similar descriptions of darkish partridges in Germany, (Schwarzbraun ‘Blackish-brown’ Partridge) and England, (Cheshire Partridge). Eventually, it was noted that these anomalies were always in close proximity to European Grey Partridges and later determined that these were just mutant varieties of the same species. In the United States, where they are often referred to as the Hungarian partridge, there have been several similar observations.

Another species not native to America, the pheasant was successfully introduced into the U.S. from China in 1881; with some previous importations recorded. Since that historically accepted first success there have been several subsequent efforts using multiple strains of imported wild and domestically raised birds. Though often referred to as the Chinese pheasant, the truth is, pheasants found in the fields across America are likely to be of somewhat mixed origin.

A seemingly black melanistic (rooster) pheasant variant was purposely developed in Europe just over a hundred years ago and have experienced a limited scattering of introductions here in the states. Its main distribution is currently within the hunting preserve community due to the bird’s relatively large size, unusual coloration, and purported hearty disposition. This rooster, the melanistic rooster we had harvested in Idaho, did not have the completely dark coloration or physical characteristics of a pen-raised pheasant. The nearest hunting preserve being about fifty miles away, the land-owner was as surprised as I was and had no knowledge of any recent planting of pheasants in the area.

I mentioned physical characteristics, in this case, they include tail, beak, and spurs. Often pen-raised roosters suffer damage to their tail feathers while incarcerated along with other aggressive male birds. The beak is the real test, however. The oft-used blinders on pen-raised birds to discourage carnivorously pecking one another destroys the natural flap-like structure covering the nasal openings and leaves them wide open. The large bird’s well-developed tail, complete beak structure, and demonstrated craftiness were all testaments to the likelihood of having wild origins. The pointed and well-developed spurs suggested an age of, at least, two years. The odds of harvesting such a bird from completely wild stock is intriguing and would be a very rare event if such is the case.

Rare, but not unheard of. Over the span of years, there have been many similar cases reported across the country. Given the assembled background of knowledge, I remain convinced this rooster was reared in the same patch of CRP from which it was harvested. However, complete certainty of the bird’s origins will always remain clouded in mystery.