[Sca-cooks] Pheasants?

[eirenetz at comcast.net]

A lady over on another list (aotc) has come into a bunch of pheasant feathers, and is asking about uses in 14th-15th century clothing. She has located visual sources from the 16th century, so they were apparently available late in our period. 

The question is, when were they imported? I know that their presence in the US is due to importation from the Orient, thus my impression is that they are native to the Orient. Is there any evidence that they were in Europe earlier than the 16th century? Being a native of Kansas, I think of pheasants as food, as long as Granpa doesn't shoot them full of buckshot. I don't recall any recipes for pheasant in the corpus, but I haven't done anything like an exhaustive study. It could be that they had them, but they didn't eat them. 

What's the history in Europe?

Eirene