by Leslie Cox; Saturday, October 11, 2014

Well, it turns out our new neighbours…the chukar partridges, or Alectoris chukar to give them their proper name…are showcased on the Royal British Columbia Museum’s website as an alien species.

Small wonder. The chukars are native to Eurasia…same as the Eurasian ring-necked doves that moved into the neighbourhood about five years ago. There are at least fourteen subspecies of chukars depicting the slight variations between countries of origin…Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Nepal, western Himalayas and dipping down into the Sinai Peninsula in Africa.

These birds have been introduced into many countries as game birds. In the U.S., they were imported first to Illinois in 1893 and are now found in forty states. The first birds arrived in BC in 1940 to a place called Dog Creek. They are now in six of the Canadian provinces but apparently are only hunted in BC…although I find that hard to believe.

These birds are justifiably a member of the pheasant family with their distinctive colouring. Red legs, red beak, red around the eye, striking black and white bands on their flanks and a black ring, or necklace, that runs across their beak, over the eyes and down the neck to encircle their white throat.

The sexes are similar with the male a bit bigger than the female. The males also have spurs on the backs of their legs.

They are apparently easy to raise but the wild ones in our neighbourhood are very skittish. Hard to get close to. Does not help having our puppy, Sadie, with us on three of the four occasions we have spotted the chukars. It is more a case of them being scared of Sadie than of her terrorizing them as we have trained Sadie not to chase or harm any birds.

But thank goodness for zoom lenses. And I have a good one on my new Canon so I was able to get a close-up shot of one of the new neighbours. I posted that photo…the same one showcased here…on the sightings page I filled out on the Royal BC Museum website. They had stated “there were, thankfully, no chukars on Vancouver Island”. However, I did see two or three flags of chukar sightings on their map…and my posting makes one more.