Pheasants

Another frost overnight and the temperature hasn't risen above 3 degrees above freezing all day.   It has been cold for late October.  The birds have come back in force, and there were coal tits in the courtyard this afternoon;  this morning three cock pheasants walked around the house from the bread crusts on the grass to the leaves in the courtyard.  This was a beautiful sight. Pheasants are a sign of autumn/winter for me; the rich blues and reds and mottled bronze of the males, the delicate nutmeg black and brown females.  Even the males disappear into the undergrowth very easily, the mottling reflecting the changing colours of the bracken and leaves.  We have seen them on the Stansbatch road over Wapley Hill since late August, birds released by the Morris estate's gamekeeper to get fit for the guns from late autumn.    I don't agree with shooting anything for sport but I love seeing the pheasants - and partridge and even turkeys, but not for the shoot surely - alongside the road.  I would give the shot birds to local restaurants, and many turn up in local markets for as little as £2 a brace.   I choose to think that most survive the guns and the foxes and breed a healthy wild population.