Our evening visitors....*Update pg 2*

[SunAngel]

I was out giving the chickens water and locking them up last night around 8 pm and went to walk over to the back door where I had set the water buckets, when I was greeted by visitors....

Had no clue what they were, til I found pics of them on McMurray hatchery. I had no clue Chukar Partridge were so pretty.

These two let my whole family corner them and let me sit inches from them. I even was able to pet both of them, before they decided they were done being stared at and flew off. They are in my neighbors yard this morning.

Would wild ones let you get that close? I am wondering if they were someones pets and they let them go. I am tempted to catch them if they come back over here today and let me get that close again.

 

[bradandcas]

Wow nice looking birds!

 

[TriciaHowe]

Beautiful! I don't know much about chukar but letting you get that close makes me think they were raised by people. Maybe they got out of their enclosure? They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.

 

[SunAngel]

They seem to be ok, but they may have only escaped yesterday. One of my neighbors called me to ask if they were one of my chickens lol.

There are a lot of stray cats around here and one of my cats gets out on occasion, she is a hunter. I am worried if they are that domesticated that they will trust the wrong creature.

I don't want to take a wild creature out of its habitat, but I don't want domesticated birds getting killed either, just because someone didn't want them anymore.

 

[b.hromada]

Pretty. I've never seen them before. Maybe they did belong to someone?
If they let you pet them, I'm sure you could probably catch them without much work. Good luck!

 

[debilorrah]

Very pretty! Did you catch them?

 

[PineBurrowPeeps]

Wow beautiful birds!

 

[byrandom]

I wouldn't expect wild birds of any type let you pet them...

That's how we got our ringneck dove colony.. Someone had released them all, and one at a time, we caught them and put them in the cages we had prepared before hand...

 

[toletiquesbysam]

Wow!! They are very different looking!

 

[pips&peeps]

If you pet them, I would say they are someone's pets. I don't think they have wild chukar in PA.

In North America, successful populations have established themselves in mountainous, rocky, arid areas throughout the western states and the current distribution is centered around the Great Basin area, including Nevada, western Utah, southwestern Idaho, northeastern California, and southeastern Oregon. In the east, game farm birds are released for hunting, but successful populations have not established themselves (Christensen 1996; Del Hoyo 1994).

Catch them and put an ad on craigslist that you found a friendly pair of "gamebirds" and let the person contacting you tell you what they lost. That way you can find the correct owner.