Hen pheasants are incredibly shy about appearing with their young. I rarely see the families when I’m in the garden, and if I do it’s a fleeting glimpse of fluff-balls creeping silently in single-file through dense undergrowth. However this morning when our resident hen appeared on the drive with her chicks, I managed to take a snapshot through a first-floor window. Not a great picture I fear, but you can definitely see ‘em! Hard to count the young as they’re quicksilver fast, moving in many directions to confuse the eye. Peter and I think eleven or twelve of them.
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I love the fact that this all goes on in the long grass of our orchards, almost unseen. Pheasants are ground-nesters and so more prone to disturbance that tree nesting birds. The gentle Jack rules in the garden, but our friend Julie and her two lively dogs come and go several times a day because she keeps her horse here, so it can get quite rackety out there with the three dogs running around in states of high excitement. Nevertheless this little hen pheasant thinks it good place to rear her young and has managed to safely hatch her clutch of eggs. The last hen to nest in our garden reared most of her young to big, fine birds. There are predators aplenty, but the garden no doubt remains more of a refuge than the open country around us.
How lovely, and to have them in your garden! We saw a very proud looking cock pheasant and three chicks standing at the edge of the road the other day, it’s the first time I remember seeing such a thing, though many years we see families of partridges; they potter up and down the street of our hamlet like chickens, and sometimes come into the garden too. They’re not native species of course, but I love to think of them escaping their intended (by the people who release them) destiny of being shot to spend the summer breeding!
Every year thousands of pheasants bred in captivity are released into the wild to be targets for hunters’ guns. I’ve seen the poor things bumble around country lanes in huge unnatural flocks, bewildered by the sudden freedom and not knowing enough to get out of the way of oncoming cars. Ungainly in take-off and heavy fliers, they associate people not with danger but with feeding-time. Hardly sport at all. But clearly from the time that they were first brought here from India for the rich to take their sport with, enough survived the guns and the weather to become naturalised in our countryside. The males in burnished copper plumage and red wattles look magnificent against the snow, a welcome blaze of colour in the short days when we long for relief from the white.
Here at Ty Isaf the resident population is safe from guns and traffic. I feed the birds through the winters, and though there are occasional explosions in the population, things generally balance out at there being one cock and two or three hens at any given time. The current male, Tiberius, has been here for quite a while now, though the females seem to come and go. The first female who came to live here when we moved in, was the gentlest and most trusting wild bird I’ve known. She would emerge from the shrubbery to dance around me and beg for seed from my pocket, allowing me to fondle the soft feathers of her neck with every sign of pleasure as she snuggled against my legs. She wasn’t the slightest bit wary of Jack, and companionably pressed herself up against him when at my feet. Such interspecies trust didn’t bode well for her, and she lasted only a couple of summers before I noticed her absence at a time when the fox in the woods behind us was active, probably with a den full of young to support. She was special, and I haven’t bonded as closely with any of the hen pheasants since she left, nor named them either. Better for them to be more wary than was the lovely and trusting Henrietta.
How absolutely wonderful!
I remember how, as a child growing up in a rural area, each autumn pheasants would flock to our yard to escape the hunters in the fields across the road. I can still hear their distinctive call…
The male wakes us early in the mornings, standing under the apple tree on our turning-circle and calling plaintively to the house for me to go out with food!
It seems he has you trained!
Oh how sweet. How very lucky you are.
This morning I had a similar (yet less rare) experience. Our pergola has become a nursery for the sweetest family of Mourning Doves. When I looked up, the whole family had gathered under the eaves, Mater, Pater and two little darling chicks. Such a treat.
I love the calls doves make. The sound of summer. Very calming.
yay! congratulations!!
Ha ha! I guess I’m a grandfather!
Yes, lovely–no doubt with more of your tales of birds and beasts to come.
If they show themselves, then yes, no doubt I shall write about them.
How lovely! Your garden is like the Garden of Eden in summer, Clive. I hope you are all well, love, Flo
All is well here, thank you Flo. And with you too, I trust.
Indeed it is, Clive. I have a new right eye, the cataract having been removed. It is only when I cover it with my hand and look ‘out’ through the cataract on my left eye that I realize how much I have been missing. I can’t wait to get the other eye done now! x
That sounds marvellous Flo. My friend Ceridwen told me that when she had her eye done, it was as though someone had taken down the dirty net curtain that had been between her and the world.