Impacts of visitors on female pheasants in pheasantry, Haripur, Pakistan.

BACKGROUND

The interaction between visitors and captive birds is complex, with a potential impact on bird's behavior and welfare. Understanding this interaction is essential for effective conservation and management.

METHODS

We conducted a study at the University of Haripur's pheasantry in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan to investigate the effects of visitor numbers, duration of visitor presence, and climatic factors on the behavior of female pheasants. We observed the state and events of feeding, hiding, and moving behaviors of 16 randomly selected individuals from five species.

RESULTS

The mixed-effects modeling results show that visitors (VT), visitors' presence duration (VPD), and temperature (TP), significantly influence feeding events ( < 0.001), feeding duration ( < 0.001), hiding events ( < 0.001) and hiding duration of female pheasants ( < 0.001). The moving events of pheasants were also significantly affected by both VT and VPD (VT: = 0.002, VPD: < 0.001). Moreover, under high visitor conditions, the impact of VPD on the behavior of female pheasants was more pronounced ( < 0.001). Additionally, our result reveals that different species of pheasants exhibit varying sensitivities to human factors and climatic factors. For instance, the two species of female pheasants with the highest feeding and hiding events were the Green pheasant () and the Ring-necked pheasant (). While hiding duration of female Green pheasants, female Golden pheasants (), and female Silver pheasants () was longer than those of others. The mean number of moving events was highest in females of Ring-necked, followed by Golden pheasants. The female Indian peafowl () and female Silver pheasants were the birds with the longest moving duration.

CONCLUSION

Our findings highlight the necessity for customized management strategies, to lessen the effects of human disturbances in pheasantries. For a thorough understanding of these interactions, more studies involving larger sample sizes and a wider variety of species are advised.