A Surprise Visitor to Barleycorn

On the weekend of the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, my hubbie replenished the feeders with peanuts and wild-bird seed, hung several fat-balls from the birch trees and prepared the bird-table with a mountain of scraps, in order to attract as many of our feathered friends as possible.
There’s always great excitement when, on red-letter days, a buzzard, or a sparrowhawk, or a great-spotted woodpecker make an appearance in the garden…and, equally, disappointing when they are absent on the official Garden Birdwatch.
Imagine our great surprise then, when, during the hour in which we were ‘doing the count’, a huge pheasant flew over the stone-dyke wall into the garden. Suddenly, our focus shifted onto this large, hen-size bird.
There is open countryside adjacent to the back garden at Barleycorn and mixed woodland bordering the field, and in this area pheasants are common on game farms where they are reared for commercial shooting…hence two possible reasons for his appearance. Not that we haven’t seen one in the garden before, for we sometimes find one korkk-korkking on the wall when one of the cats is nearby.

Phasianus Colchicus, better known as the common pheasant, is not native to Britain.
Some sources claim pheasants were first introduced 2000 years ago when the Romans invaded Britain. Others claim they were brought here with the Normans in the 11th Century. One fact appears to be indisputable. They originated in western Asia.

This male probably came into the garden because it was attracted by the overspill of seeds from the feeders and the fat-balls, which hang from the birches bordering the adjacent field. Pheasants and other game-birds often keep to the margins of the field where the stone-dyke wall, which borders the entire field, affords them shelter and camouflage.

As you can see he is very colourful, with a dark-green face and red wattles, and a body and tail of rich chestnut, with golden-brown and black patterns. We were transfixed, for he looked as if he was wearing Joseph's technicolour-dreamcoat on this otherwise dull day in January with the garden looking somewhat drab in tone, while awaiting its Spring coat.

He wandered around with his long tail cocked up at an angle. At first, the smaller birds flew upwards but soon settled down again when they realised he was only interested in feeding on the seeds, and not on them.

After he’d had enough seeds he strutted across to the rockery and pecked at a few shoots on the lithospermum, pictured in one of the photographs below. It is a heather-like plant, which comes in beautiful Gentian-blue shades and has a lovely trailing habit, covering slopes in the scree bed.

On our bird count sheet, we had to note down the largest number - of each species - we saw together at any one time during the hour. Here are the totals.

Blackbird - 3; Blue tit – 8; Carrion crow – 1; Chaffinch – 17; Coal tit – 3; Collared dove – 4; Dunnock – 1; Feral pigeon – 20; Great tit – 1; Greenfinch – 1; House sparrow – 10; Jackdaw – 5; Robin – 1; Starling 14; and Pheasant - 1

It was interesting to see how easily a twiggy rhododendron shrub camouflaged his brightly-coloured plumage when he ran behind it. He felt safe enough to wander around, as I was filming, and taking photographs, indoors.

After taking a few photos, I set my camera to video mode, the results of which you can see below. There is no sound, for if I had opened the window, he, along with the rest of the birds, would have flown off.
Since then, we have seen him most days strutting about the garden picking up seeds. Taz has given him a wide berth, which is fortunate for both. There's no mistaking his presence when he starts his korkk-korkking to warn Taz, in no uncertain terms, to keep away. He is the first of three surprise visitors we have had during the past week. I shall reveal the identities of the others in the next post.