Counting Haleakalā’s Rainbow Chickens

Haleakalā National Park’s forests are home to striking birds, from the scarlet ‘i'iwi to the yellow and olive-green kiwikiu, but one of the park’s newest arrivals may outshine them all — at least in the color department. The male golden pheasant sports a golden-yellow crest that would be the envy of Fabio, a bright red chest, a green upper back, an orange cape, touches of shimmering blue on its wings and a long black-and-cinnamon tail.

“There are so many species of colorful pheasants, and the golden pheasant is one of the most spectacular,” said Thane K. Pratt, a retired wildlife biologist who’s focused much of his career on Hawaiian birds. “It’s just so beautiful.”

Of course, the appearance at Haleakalā of a new non-native species — as gorgeous as it might be — is no cause for celebration. Over centuries of human occupation, the Hawaiian archipelago has been besieged by invasive animals and plants, and as a result, many endemic species have died out or are on the brink of extinction. “So, when a new invasive species shows up, it catches the attention,” Pratt said.

The golden pheasant was first detected on the northwestern slope of Haleakalā volcano in 1996. As reported sightings ticked up, questions arose within Hawaiian birding circles. How many were there in the wild? Where did they range? And perhaps most importantly, were they there to stay? As a member of the Hawaii Birds Records Committee, Pratt agreed to track down answers about the pheasant’s status on Maui.

Golden pheasants are native to the mountains of China, but they’ve become popular ornamental birds across the world. People breed them to enhance the brightness of their colors or prioritize mutations that create varieties such as salmon pheasants or dark-throated pheasants. Some golden pheasant enthusiasts let their birds roam on their property, and they escape; other owners release them deliberately into the wild. But those feral populations usually blink out because of inadequate climate or habitat, or an abundance of predators.

Until recently, the United Kingdom was believed to be home to the only established golden pheasant populations outside of China. There might have been as many as 2,000 wild golden pheasants in Britain at some point, but releases there became illegal in 1981, and numbers dwindled. When Will Smith, a researcher at the University of Nottingham, studied golden pheasant demographics, he found only small groups here and there totaling maybe 40 birds. “The only reason they lasted as long as they did was because there were illegal releases, topping them up,” Smith said.

The golden pheasant was added to the British list of wild birds in 1971, but its standing remained controversial among birders. Smith said that while some almost mythologized them and went on quasi pilgrimages to spot them in the dense, opaque forests they favor, others “saw them as a bit of a joke, because they’re like, you know, rainbow-colored chickens.” Following the publication of Smith’s research in 2023, British ornithological authorities changed the status of the golden pheasant to that of a species “whose naturalized populations are either no longer self-sustaining or are considered extinct.”

Golden pheasants were first brought to Hawaii around 1865, and over time, their spectacular plumage has been incorporated into featherwork, including elaborate hatbands. The first detection of a golden pheasant in the wild was made just a few miles from the park in a remote and rugged area far from urban settlements. Pratt said it’s unlikely the pheasant or pheasants got there on their own, as they’re not strong long-distance flyers. “There are a few breeders locally,” he said, “and somebody must have just decided, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to release some?’ And they did.”

What could have been an anomaly turned out instead to be the start of a trend. In the following years, researchers, land managers and others reported additional observations — typically, the extremely shy bird is more often heard than seen. Pratt looked through golden pheasant detections logged on the popular birding website eBird, but he soon realized he had other sources of information at his disposal.

In Haleakalā and neighboring protected areas including the Waikamoi Preserve managed by The Nature Conservancy, staff conduct recurring forest bird surveys and have set up audio recording devices and trail cameras. The primary goals of those efforts are to monitor forest birds and the movement of invasive mammals such as feral pigs and goats, and the area surveyed only partially overlaps with the golden pheasant’s favored habitat. So the datasets were not tailored to Pratt’s purpose — but they were free. The data trove, which included 128,219 audio recordings, was also massive. “It got to be a much, much larger project than I anticipated,” Pratt said.

Pratt enlisted the help of colleagues, including Chris Warren, the coordinator of Haleakalā’s forest bird program, to sift through it all. The picture that emerged was incomplete, but it documented the presence of males, females and juveniles, and it showed an increase in the golden pheasant’s numbers and range. Though it’s impossible to know for sure, the team estimated that perhaps a couple of hundred birds lived in a territory that includes the northern areas of the park. That the golden pheasant would have found its place was not a foregone conclusion, as many non-native Galliformes, or chicken-like species, from ring-necked pheasants to chukar partridges, have staked their claims to various areas of the park. “You can’t just keep adding birds and expect them all to get along,” Pratt said.

Still, the golden pheasants found a sliver of suitable high-elevation montane forests largely unoccupied by their fowl compatriots. That habitat has few feral cats, and owls don’t tend to forage under the canopy, so predators are not much of an issue either. Smith, who was not involved in the Maui-based research, said a banding and recapture program would be necessary to confirm the Haleakalā golden pheasants are birds born in the wild rather than released captives, but he said existing signs point to a self-sustaining population. “It already looks like that might be what’s happening,” he said.

If the golden pheasants are not going anywhere, then the next question is whether they are damaging their fragile environment. But with Haleakalā facing such formidable threats from invasive species already — non-native weeds using up water and nutrients, feral cats preying on native petrels, malaria-carrying mosquitoes decimating honeycreepers — a few pretty golden pheasants don’t rank high on conservationists’ list of things to worry about. “We have to do that sort of triage of resources and be like, is it actually that big of a deal?” Warren said.

The Hawaiian Islands used to count several species of native ground birds, but most of those went extinct after humans settled the archipelago many centuries ago. Not all pheasant species disperse seeds, but Warren said if golden pheasants are performing this ecological role, it’s possible the potential benefits could outweigh the damage they cause.

“I think you’ve got to have a more holistic view of these birds,” Warren said. “I’m just saying it might not be all bad.”