The Matter of the Fine Pheasant.

I seem to have attracted a part-time pet: a cock pheasant possessed of the most unusual plumage I’ve ever seen – lots of silver grey and brindle with chestnut patches on his wings and patterns of black dots and squares which would make excellent curtains if you were into that sort of thing. And what particularly struck me when I first saw him a week or so ago was that he didn’t shy away and regard me suspiciously as the other pheasants do. He walked slowly towards me, seemingly with purpose, until he was a few feet away, and then turned and wandered off in a different direction. I said something like ‘what a splendidly handsome bird you are’ and that was that.

He came into the garden again this evening, but this time approached me almost at a trot and came close enough to reach out and touch if I’d wanted to. (I didn’t for two reasons: 1. I was busy deadheading some daffodils at the time, and 2. I didn’t fancy adding bird flu to the already weighty bag of health issues I’m carrying around at the moment. I’ve become a bit of a wimp in the matter of health issues.) He was persistent, however, pushing his head out every time I snapped a seed off, and it soon dawned on me that he wanted me to give him food.

And so I did. I went and fetched the pot of bird seed and put a handful down on the path, then left him gobbling greedily while I went about my business. When I returned to the scene all the food was gone and so was the pheasant.

The combination of highly unusual plumage and untypical tameness leads me to suspect that my new pet (I’ve decided to call him Oscar) is probably a cross between a wild pheasant and one of those ornamental varieties which I gather fine ladies in country mansions like to have wandering their capacious gardens. If that is the case, it would seem likely that he’s used to being hand fed. Maybe some fine lady somewhere realised that he was a mongrel, and maybe she has an aversion to mongrels because she’s been conditioned by her elevated class to recognise the pre-eminence of racial purity, and maybe she sent him on his way with orders never to darken her peony patch again. (Which is actually a veiled compliment to the dear lady because her husband would probably have shot him and given the body to the cook.)

The only difficulty with this theory is that I’m unaware of any fine ladies living in mansions in the immediate vicinity. The closest thing to a fine lady in these parts is the Lady B’s Dear Mama. She lives in a house about three times the size of mine, but it’s still some way short of a mansion. And besides, she works for a living (or did the last I heard) which proper fine ladies don’t. Their work, if such it can be called, usually amounts to writing a few letters and instructing the serving staff to prepare for the next dinner party.

And so the mystery is unresolved and will probably remain so unless the bird has learned to speak his name and address in case he gets lost. To paraphrase a favourite line from a favourite film: “Where do ’e come from? Where do ’e go?” (The Ghost Train 1941.) But I bet he’ll be back to capitalise on my sentimental nature by further depleting my stock of bird seed. If an explanation should ever come to light, I’ll be sure to post it here.