Bog Myrtle & Peat

And still spring continues to unfold on the farm. We have a handful of pheasants on the Chayne, and they lurk throughout the year on the low ground around the farm buildings. A large  pheasant shoot releases birds two miles away at the bottom of the valley, and it is inevitable that a few stragglers will always roam our way. A shortage of appropriate cover means that there is not much point turning an area of the farm into a pheasant shoot, but, as far as I am concerned, our most colourful gamebird is always welcome to drop by for a visit.

Building tree guards this morning, I watched a cock pheasant standing high up on a tussock of grass around fifty yards away. His wattles were swollen red, and every few minutes he would stretch out his neck, scream a challenge and punctuate it with a burst of drumming wingbeats. Quite who he was trying to impress seemed a mystery at first, but I soon noticed that another cock was creeping around his feet, spreading his tail into a wide paddle and tilting it from one side to the other. The display seemed quite innocuous to me, but the higher bird took great exception to it and popped off his perch to confront the newcomer.

The two birds sized each other up like wrestlers, ducking their heads almost to the ground and walking slowly past one another, each with a glint of outrage dancing in his eyes. Like lightning, one struck out a peck at the other and the fight was on. By this point, they had sunk so low into the grass that I could only make out the tips of their wings and the occasional flash of a tail, but it seemed as if some long standing beef was being settled. They began to bounce in the air, striking at each other and assuming at every second a deeper expression of fury and pomposity. The grass was rustling noisily and then, in an instant, it was over. One of the antagonists withdrew himself from the ring and retreated, but in all the confusion I had lost track of who was who. Whether it was the original bird or his rival who began to crow on the tussock of grass just a few moments later will now be a mystery forever.