Longwy Basin. He gets up (very) early to listen to the melody of the crowing rooster

7 a.m. Patrick Trognon, 65, president of the Colmey-Flabeuville Accredited Municipal Hunting Association (ACCA), is on the lookout. In the silence of the morning dew that has settled in his field, he listens attentively for the squawking of the pheasant, also known as the crowing cock. "It's easily recognizable because it only produces two small sounds, like a gurgle. Then, there's silence ," he murmurs.

For nearly an hour, he will crisscross the 550 hectares of plain, counting the number of pheasants in the two communes for which he is responsible: "Sometimes, I simply stay in my vehicle at the side of the road so as not to frighten them. When I lower my window, I can hear them."

The retiree is a volunteer census agent for the Meurthe-et-Moselle Hunting Federation (FDC54) since 2020. He volunteers to count them every year from April ¹ to May 15, the date of the counting campaign.

Jordan Zgonc, 24, a municipal employee in Tellancourt , is also taking part in the pheasant census. At 8 a.m., he stands in a damp, tall-grassed area to listen to its song: "I admit it's magnificent."

Measuring 70 to 90 cm long (half of which is its tail) and weighing just over 1 kilo, the crowing cock is cunning and gives hunters a hard time: "It's ultimately a complex hunt, because it moves quickly." In the Tellancourt area, forty birds are reintroduced each year. "Honestly, the pheasant isn't really hunted but rather observed," says Jordan Zgonc.

The two hunters readily admit that returning the pheasant to its natural habitat is "a good idea" for biodiversity. One question remains: would the cock-of-the-crown become an endangered species? "No," says Gilles Maugice, a technician at the FDC54, in charge of the pheasant census in the Longwy basin. Urbanization and agricultural modernization have profoundly altered rural landscapes, destroying natural habitats essential to the survival of animals. The pheasant is one of these endangered species, like many others. The approach to repopulating the cock-of-the-crown in the Pays-Haut "will restore balance to an ecosystem that is battered on a daily basis."

The 54 Hunting Federation reintroduces nearly 3,500 pheasants into their natural habitat (across the entire department), distributed at the request of hunters. The birds purchased, between ten and twelve weeks old, come from the pheasant strain conservatory managed by the OFB (French Office for Biodiversity). In the Meuse region, there is also a small producer of crowing roosters.

The average price of a pheasant is €11.