Thousands of pheasants are raised in captivity to be purchased by private individuals to be hunted on their estates or lands here in Southampton Town, the North Fork of Long Island and across New York State. The pheasants are released right before the start of winter. They have no survival skills, never having needed to worry about warm shelter and food since those were always provided in captivity. Many are shot at formal, organized hunts that are currently legal hunts. The pheasants that are not shot starve, freeze, fall prey to predators, or are killed on the road. These animals are raised to be cruelly released into the wild with no skills to survive. 

 I miss all my pheasants that I cared for until they were killed one by one. This is for Felllini, Passolini, Leone, and all my crew named after Italian film directors! Read about my magical and heartbreaking experience trying to save them below:

The True Story of the North Sea Pheasants

 

and How They Got Their Italian Names

 

For weeks, cold late-autumn weeks, I drove slowly through Conscience Point, scanning the tree line. With a dance of colored feathers lacking coordination, the pheasants scrambled within view as they circled into higher grass. Sometimes they would reverse course, throwing themselves without reason or style back to the road's edge. I would lower my window, tossing stale bread or peanuts toward them, often missing by more than scent could carry. Like the pheasants, I lack coordination. At first, I found it curious and amusing that the pheasants would hover along the edge of the road while fields stretched as far as the eye could see on both sides. Were they trying to hail down taxis or other rides back to the farm or were they even more desperate, selling out, strutting the streets, showing off their feathers? No matter, they clearly lacked street skills and I had to get them to safety. 

Week after week, I lay piles of seed leading from the busy road up into the North Sea Beach Colony where my home sits at the forest's edge. Sometimes I would see pheasants close in on the colony's entrance. More often, I saw dead ones lying along North Sea Road. I would place their lifeless bodies, still vibrant with color, in the brush hidden from the sight of any friend with whom they might have traveled. A few weeks into the seed trail mission, I caught sight of a bevy, or “bouquet” as a group is often called with a nod to their beauty, testing the foreign roads of the colony.

Then one snowy day, while sitting in my living room, I heard their undeniable squawking announce their arrival. That afternoon there were four in my yard. I scattered seeds at the clearing of the forest edge and watched them devour the morsels with delight. From that day on, there have been pheasants here every day, counting eleven at once at the height. Not an early morning riser, I suddenly found myself jumping out of bed at the first early squawks. Half asleep, I would make my way into the warm snow boots that I kept ready by the back door, grabbing the seed container to shake. With each loud shake of the container, I would mimic their language. Squawk, Squawk! All but one would run back into the woods at my arrival, hungry but never desperate. This bolder pheasant would stay in the clearing, running in circles in the open until he could take no more and swirl right up to me. Even among his crew, I recognized him immediately. Eventually he showed no fear of me and would run right up to me as if he would throw himself dramatically into my arms. I had to name him and it had to sound like a “fuh” for pheasant. It came to me that day: Fellini! The perfect name - a pheasant with all the character in the world - both fearless and clownish like the Italian director who refused straight lines in storytelling and captured hearts with his characters wandering around, carrying tragedy and absurdity in equal measure. 

A few months after daily entertainment and interaction with Fellini, he was killed. As heartbroken as I was at the passing of Fellini, I still had the others to feed. Sergio Leone, named after the Spaghetti Western director, actually strutted a straight line and chased the few female pheasant visitors I briefly had, a masculine cowboy to be sure. His polar opposite, the outcast pheasant with a broken tail that I named Pasolini, after Pier Paolo Pasolini, became my new Fellini as he, too, would run out to greet me. 

After more heartbreaking burials over the summer, there were only two visitors in the autumn: Pasolini and a rather handsome one I named Marcello, in honor of Fellini, as Marcello Mastroiaini played the fictional version of Fellini in 8 1/2. Early on, when I started naming the pheasants after Italian film directors, I added the few relevant Italian words and phrases I knew to the "squawk, squawk" greeting. I still don't know if neighbors would hear me call emphatically into the woods: Como stai, bambini? Ciao, bello! Mangia! And ultimately, ti amo. And, I really do love them. Every day I provide seeds, corn, peanuts for treats, and water in exchange for a heartwarming experience of connecting with big personality, beautiful little creatures. I have learned a lot. For example, I would not have thought they needed fresh water from me, but after noticing my daily turkey visitor jump up to the bird bath to drink, I thought that I should provide water in a bowl on the ground for the pheasants. Sometimes, Pasolini is more excited for the fresh water than the food. I had a long run with my regular two until one day about a month ago when Marcello disappeared. The other random pheasants I would occasionally see down North Sea Road were also no more. 

Pasolini is likely the sole survivor of apparently hundreds dropped last year. Hundreds of pheasants came to this area most likely in crates in a truck or multiple trucks full of crates or cages. They came from captivity, where they were fed and where they probably knew warmth (warmth of shelter, not love). I don't know if the pheasant farmers who raised them recognized their countless personality types. I don't know what the farmers thought as the pheasants were ultimately carted off to their fate. Here in this beautiful area that is reminiscent of the countryside of England, the pheasants would finally be released. Did some momentarily feel that they were free at last? If any did have a moment of joy as the cage door flung open, they must have tragically and innocently missed the absurdity of their fate. As if taken out of a page of Fellini's film Nights of Cabiria, in which his muse, a street prostitute determined to gain freedom and love, maintained her innocence in the face of cruel fate, the pheasants' joy would be short-lived. Like Cabiria, they could not survive the streets or, in their case, either the streets of North Sea or the pastoral fields they would be shot over. The pheasants would have no feed and no shelter. They were dropped right before winter. Countless, nameless ones would die of starvation and freezing temperatures or be killed in the name of sport, if you could call something so barbaric, cruel and uncontested “sport”. 

A little over a month ago I dreamt I was walking down the road, enjoying the brisk autumn air and colorful trees lining the streets. Turning a corner, I saw a few pheasants strutting together in front of me. Innocently, I wondered if Pasolini made some new friends. Just as the pheasants must have felt elation the moment their cage doors flung open on their release, I felt a flash of joy, thinking of the new ones ready to love. But then as I walked further and saw more and more pheasants ducking haphazardly out of the trees into the street, the tragedy sunk in. I realized there must be hundreds of new pheasants in Conscience Point. It was late fall and it was starting all over again. 

This piece of nonfiction is copyrighted.