It’s a pheasant!

~ rosiebooks2009

A long time ago now, on one of my dire but dutiful Sunday visits to Mum, I was desperately trying to describe this big, beautiful bird that kept visiting my garden. I had saved all the details up to lay before her, but on the long drive over my mental ‘vision’ of this wildly exotic creature had become a bit vague and jumbled.

“It’s sort of like a chicken but with longer legs, and a long tail, and this purplish-greeny iridescent head…” She looked at me with that despairing look she seemed to reserve just for me:

“It’s a pheasant!”

Ever since I’ve wondered how, if you’ve never, throughout many years of circumscribed suburban existence, caught sight of a pheasant you should somehow know, when one makes a heavy landing on your back garden fence, that it is a pheasant.

I do know that, unintentionally, she had spoiled that particular little bit of magic and wonder for me. Like when my friend and I, at a very, very much younger age, spotted what we believed to be a spaceship in the late evening sky: two little points of light flying side by side, one red and one green. That turned out to be an aeroplane. Now every time I see aeroplane lights in a darkening sky I think “If only it was a spaceship… “

And now I seem to be turning into Mum. I have this new slate-roofed bird-table, also a ground-feeder, and having finally persuaded a few elusive northern birds to come and visit, sit for ages with one corner of the net curtain clothes-pegged up, observing them. The neighbours caught me at this once, and perhaps thought that I was interested in their comings and goings. I have now become an expert swift clothes-peg remover.

It suddenly seemed important to be able to name my birds, should any visitor ask, so I got a secondhand,  not-very-good pocket reference book. I do believe I currently have (sorry, but that’s what they’re called) Great Tits, Sparrows, a Robin or two, Starlings, Wood Pigeons, Chaffinches and Jackdaws. I was particularly glad to identify the last two as up till then I had been thinking of them, respectively, as Little Pink Things and Small Crows Or Rooks.

12 thoughts on “It’s a pheasant!”

    1. Hi Darryl : ) I have more or less got the house sorted out and had my first brief visit from a former “down south” neighbour this week. Cumbrian weather can vary wildly throughout each day, but tending towards the cool and wet. At the moment it’s cool and wet.

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  2. There are also excellent apps for identifying birds and plants. I think the ones by Cornell University might be free. One of them lets you identify them by their song, which is great if the little buggers (you can see what level I’m at) are hiding.

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      1. I use one of those birdsong apps for identifying birds here. Trying to match what you see with what the book says is beyond me….just like mushroom books.

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      2. I checked. I have eBird, Merlin Bird ID and the Collins Bird Guide. The first two are better. For plants I have Seek, PlantNet and British Trees. I think, apart from the Collins Bird Guide, they are free. No idea whether they are the best, but they are good. Now all I need to do is make sure the bird ones are where I can reach them before the bird flies away!

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  4. I think the Creator would be as fine with your “little pink things” as I am, and maybe even moreso. I don’t recall who spoke thus of alleged societal gaffes/deficits (Sir Edmund Hillary? Burke?), “I ask myself, ‘Is this matter so serious that small children may die from it?’ If the answer is ‘no,’ I stop worrying about it immediately.” Me, too (now!). Also, I hope a Scottish pheasant comes a-callin’ soon! 😊

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