File:Core Banks - Aug 2017 - 54.jpg

English: Animals of Core Banks, North Carolina: Most likely a Ring-necked Pheasant - Phasianus colchicus. According to www.carolinabirdclub.org "this Asian species has been introduced into several parts of North Carolina over the past 100 years, but only a few areas along the immediate coast were able to provide sufficient habitat for populations of Ring-necked Pheasants to become established, with “long-term” breeding populations. These sites –- Hatteras Island, Ocracoke Island, Portsmouth Island, and Core Banks –- may have reached their population peaks in the 1960's and 1970's. After that time, mammalian predators, especially the Gray Fox and perhaps the Red Fox also, made their way onto Hatteras Island. By about 1990, the Ring-necked Pheasant population on that island had disappeared. The small population on Ocracoke Island also seems to now be gone, leaving only a few birds, apparently, left on Cape Lookout National Seashore (Core Banks and Portsmouth Island). The favored habitat on the Outer Banks for this gallinaceous bird is grasslands and low, brushy thickets. "