Pheasants
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Seven Days Later
Just wanted to post this picture of the same partridge chick I photographed a week ago, when it was a day-old. I’d like to photograph the same chick every week until it gets its adult plumage, mainly because I don’t know much about grey partridges and it would be interesting to document it. He started Continue reading
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Further Partridge Setbacks
Despite having been lent a cracking “covina” fully automatic incubator, it looks like I’m set for another partridge disaster. I was sent two dozen eggs through the post on Tuesday and it was obvious that they had been very badly packaged. If you held the polystyrene packaging upside down, you could hear the eggs plopping Continue reading
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Splay Legs
After my disastrous hatch of grey partridge at the weekend, I was fairly irritated by the fact the most promising survivor developed a dramatic case of splay-leg and quite rapidly became totally unable to move around the brooder. As I thinned out the stragglers and realised that I was only going to be left with Continue reading
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…And Not So Good
Having expected the partridges to hatch on Friday night, I was getting worried by Sunday morning. The shells had started to chip on Thursday, but no further activity whatsoever was cause for concern. When one partridge hatched at lunchtime, I was sure all the others would be close behind, but there was no sign of Continue reading
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Game On
Just worth posting that I set the my first ever batch of eggs beneath my silkie x sussex bantam this morning. Having acquired 13 pheasant eggs from the game farmer down the road, I turned them yesterday while the final preparations were being sorted out, then set them this morning when she was out for Continue reading
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Red and Grey
Now that the eggs are in the incubator and the first bantam is starting to show some evidence of turning broody, my partridge project seems to be coming together nicely. I don’t know a great deal about grey partridges, so this area of my work on the Chayne is something of a new voyage of Continue reading
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Releasing Birds, Mk.2
As part of an ongoing experiment to see what happens to gamebirds on the Chayne and in an attempt to learn something more about gamekeeping, I’m now bracing for the arrival of thirty partridges. We won’t be shooting these birds, but it will be interesting to see how they get on in their pen, which Continue reading
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Releasing Pheasants
The past two or three days have been very busy since the pheasants have arrived. A single crate containing fifteen birds went up on Thursday morning, and I’ve been back and forth trying to keep an eye on them ever since. The continuous wild weather is making the whole project a pretty bleak affair, but Continue reading
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Release Pen?
After two days of serious graft, the pheasant release pen is starting to take shape. It’s always extremely satisfying to work a chainsaw in a sitka plantation, because it gives you the pleasing feeling that you are carving yourself a space out of the trees from the inside. Thirty spruces have come down to open Continue reading
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Ten Days Later
Ten days out of the incubator and the pheasant chicks are starting to come along leaps and bounds. Some are showing rapid development in their wings and wing feathers, and all are getting bigger by the day. Their incessant peeping rings through the kitchen at Solway Feeders, where they are housed in a huge cardboard Continue reading
About
“Shout on, Morgan. You’ll be nothing tomorrow”
Swn y galon fach yn torri, 1952
Also at: https://andtheyellowale.substack.com
Bog Myrtle & Peat 