Nature’s a wonderful thing most of the time. We love our birds and especially dear Boo Boo the male pheasant who struts about preposterously pompously. His females ignore him unless he’s indicating food but he persists in performing outrageous display pirouettes before their jaded gaze. And he is constantly on the Qui Vive for The Enemy, another male who skulks about in the undergrowth. We occasionally witness aerial battles when he chases the other up into the air with raucous cock cocking.
So this morning when I went across to the workshop to do a little vannerie I was stunned to see BB by the pond, gazing with a surprised expression upon the lifeless corpse of Enemy. ‘Not me guv,’ he seemed to be implying. The thing is, not five minutes earlier I had done this same journey and seen nothing, heard nothing. What was occurrin’? Either our hero had felled the brute or it had perhaps collided with the apple tree during an escape. We will never know.
But we had to act sharpish because BB now decided to check it was really a gonner and started pecking at it. Too distressing.
Enemy was temporarily removed to the shed, BB walked into the pond for a drink and being a bird of very little brain, promptly forgot all about him.
Later on we, well Adrian, carried the deceased as we took our daily perambulation round the fields. We left him in a patch of orchids down the lane and hope Fox will make a good supper.
There are now sheep and lambs in one of the fields up there but most are still empty. The tadpoles in the small pond are still tadpoles, the mayflowers are still in profusion up on the moor, the hawthorn tree in the copse is blooming, larks are singing. We’ve still only seen two swallows though - we used to have many more.
Fish and Chips again this evening.
