one of the rarest birds that i see is the red necked pheasant. in the 35 years i have lived in northwest indiana i have seen very few. sometimes going years in between seeing one. in 2024 i did see a pair of pheasants, a male and female together for the first time. in spring 2025 i did see them again at almost the same spot. however, i had never seen a baby pheasant. in early june 2025 i was at that spot early in the morning just after sunrise and i saw a hen pheasant come out of some brush into a cornfield. she was about 50-60 yards away. she started running in the corn field away from the brush. i noticed what appeared to be some baby pheasants enter the corn field following her. i quickly took some shots of the babies and the hen pheasant who was probably 25 feet ahead of them. this was one of those 15 second photo opportunities wildlife photographers frequently have. when i got home and downloaded the shots, all the shots of the babies were very blurry out of focus. the corn was about 6 inches tall and at the shooting distance my autofocus locked on the corn instead of the babies. discouraged, i looked at the pictures of the hen pheasant. i looked at one picture and i had a big smile immediately. one picture showed the hen pheasant and one baby pheasant in stride running into the early morning sun. the baby pheasant was positioned almost perfectly for the picture with some early golden glow from the sun. this is the first picture i had ever gotten of a baby pheasant. it is my single favorite picture of 2025. seven weeks later, early august, i was at almost the exact same location and the hen pheasant and her babies were much closer. i got a good picture of the hen pheasant and some pictures of the babies. picture #2 shows how many babies the hen pheasant had raised. counting across there are nine baby pheasants. the hen pheasant crossed the road in front of me and went into a cornfield on the other side. i took several pictures of the baby pheasants which were spread out alittle. the hen pheasant must have called to the babies because they suddenly all flew across the road and into the cornfield. this really made me happy that they had all fledged and could fly. this really greatly improved their chances of living through the rest of their first year. if there was an award for mother red neck pheasant of the year, that hen would get my vote. maybe next year i will see more pheasants in that area.
hen pheasant and chick running into early morning sunlight
thank you for your comments eric. yes i did feel good after finally seeing the baby pheasants. one of the things that keeps us going out as photographers is knowing that each time out you may see something new and exciting.
