Jane:

Ring-necked pheasants are seen in Seward Park on a sporadic but fairly regular basis (meaning clusters of sightings every couple of years) over the last decade. I know that there have been a handful of reports this year, both from the park and surrounding neighborhood. A century ago pheasants were common on adjacent Graham Hill (the Uplands), which was still undeveloped and was then called Chink Hill. A common story is that the name Chink Hill came from the resident Chinese ring-necked pheasants that were called "chinks". The pheasants were abundant there since a decade or two after they were introduced into Washington in 1888.

As relatively benign as this story of the racist name "Chink Hill" is, the Friends of Seward Park and the Rainier Valley Historical Society have recently uncovered evidence that the name more probably came from the five Japanese and one Chinese laborers who cleared Clark's Prairie, an oak savannah area that included Chink Hill, from 1904-1909. Neighborhood residents recall stories of camps of "Chinese" living in tents on the hill - these were probably the temporary Japanese workers living on-site during the clearing. The one Chinese worker, with the unlikely name of Henry Henry, lived as a caretaker for the Sears estate on the hill on Juneau st even after the clearing was finished. At least four people who grew up in the area remember their fathers talking about the "Chinaman" on the hill (Henry Henry was born in California of Chinese parents) and are sure that Chink Hill was named for him. In later decades Henry Henry was gone but the pheasants have persisted until today, so by the 1930s the name was attributed to the pheasants.

After World War II the area was developed as "Mountain Vista" before settling on the currently commonly used names "Graham Hill" (after early pioneer Walter Graham in the 1860-1870s) for the hill, and "the Uplands" (the name of a largely failed attempt at development in the 1920s) for the neighborhood in general. The steep slopes of Graham Hill leave enough brush to facilitate the survival of pheasants in the area.


Paul Talbert
Friends of Seward Park

----- Original Message -----

From: "Jane Hadley" <jhadle at clearwire.net>
To: "Dear Tweeters" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 5:42:12 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] Follow-up on Seward Park mystery bird

Dear Tweetsters - It appears that the bird that my friend and I saw at Seward Park on our walk this morning was a female Ring-necked Pheasant.

After hearing from two people suggesting that as a possibility, I looked pictures up online and I believe it matches what I saw very closely except for the length of the tail. My friend and I thought the bird we saw had a shorter tail. However, I noticed when perusing the many pictures of female Ring-necks at Google Images that when you look at the bird sideways, the tail looks long. When you look at the bird from the back, the tail can look considerably foreshortened. You can see two pictures illustrating this difference at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106724165563614020677/SewardParkMysteryBird?authuser=0&feat=directlink

More to the point, however, one of the people I heard from works at the Seward Park Environmental Learning Center. (I will not mention his name, because I did not ask his permission to use his name.) Here is what he said:



There have been female Ringed-neck pheasants seen in Seward Park this season by some of our Naturalist staff. I suspect that this is your mystery bird.


I wanted also to include some information from Gene Hunn's new revised 2nd Edition of his Birding in Seattle and King County (highly recommended!) about Ruffed Grouse and also Ring-necked pheasant in the Seattle area:


<blockquote>
Ruffed Grouse were a fixture on the University of Washington campus in Seattle before 1911 (Miller and Curtis 1940:42). As of 1980, they could still be found as close to Seattle as Bellefields Nature Park and St. Edward State Park on the east shore of Lake Washington. Since 2008, they are found regularly only as close to Seattle as the Snoqualmie River Valley, Tolt-MacDonald Park and Carnation Marsh Sanctuary.
</blockquote>

and


<blockquote>
RING-NECKED PHEASANTS and CALIFORNIA QUAIL were quite common residents of farm fields and the larger city parks through the 1980s. Both species have become very scarce now. King County CBC counts have dwindled to near zero since 2005. The Washington Deparment of Fish & Wildlife releases pheasants for the benefit of bird hunters -- as at Cherry Valley and Stillwater in the Snoqualmie River Valley-- but few persist. Pheasant season runs from late September through November. Be alert if birding in these areas in season.
</blockquote>

It's nice to get this mystery bird cleared up so quickly!

Jane Hadley
Seattle, WA