will ya look at this guy.....

[captainbovine]

Here is my new friend Parson the pheasant, he's a bruiser isn't he?

I called him Parson because that white collar he has makes him look like a vicar hahahaa!!

he's lovely though isn't he...those colours!!!

[captainbovine]

ooh thought he'd flown off there for a minute!!!!

[bitsnknots]

He's lovely CB.  We've had ducks waddling up the drive a while back.  We've also had red legged partridges and sparrowhawks as well.  The last place where we lived, we had pheasants and we even had a red squirrel as well.

[ed_blackadder_1]

Mmmm lovely with roast potatoes.

[dairyview123]

CB, we have had one here for 3 days, we think he is eating the corn we put out for the birds! such lovely colours.

[merc1_clocks]

 I'm over-run with them!

The Laird raises them for the Americans to come shoot.

 I'm the bane of his life...

I devote that day once a year, to my big pots & pans...& bang away to my heart's content.

Hopefully, a lot fly off, & live to tell the tale 

[captainbovine]

good for you Merc!!

he comes everyday and waddles about the garden picking up the bits of seed the birds knock out of their seed feeder! he's a scream, he "hides" from me, but I can see him as none of the bushes have leaves on yet....

big dope but I love him!

[2017clearout]

Oh, he's mighty fine!  There was one that lived in my parents' garden for a couple of years, and found a Mrs Pheasant and had some babies - he was called "Percy".  The cats used to sit and eye him up, but whenever they were in the garden and saw him, they'd do a runner because he was a mighty bruiser!

A lot of them are really tame (which is why so many get flattened by cars too, I think) because they are often hand reared for those driven shoots.  I don't shoot, but I can't see how it can be much a challenge having half tame birds chased right in front of your guns - I see the point of going out with a dog and flushing the hedgerows, if that's your thing, but paying thousands to stand in one place like that?  Not for me...

[cee-dee]

Now I'm not a shooting type but was brought up in the middle of a large estate and just up the lane from my paternal grandparents smallholding was........ the keepers cottage!

He had a daughter....... so........ I learned a bit about Pheasants, dogs, shooting, oh yes, and the woods..... I always loved the woods..... but I digress.

Now then, Pheasants. Reared or wild, they're often stupid birds that'd rather walk or run than fly which is why so many end up being killed on the roads. Pheasants roost here, want to roam over there..... road in between, wallop! Same coming back, wallop.

Now, the worst casualties seem to be where a new road has been driven through the land or an old road "improved" (so it's faster). Those Pheasants just will not fly (until it's too late, wallop).

Driven shooting on a good estate looks for "High Pheasants" which are often "curling". Just have a go at shooting them, it's not outright slaughter.

Often, large estates will have been "laid out" with shooting in mind and there'll be a mix of woods and arable land with the lie of anticipated drives in mind. Often, crops are planted (rotated) with one eye on the shooting and game strips are often planted with the idea of keeping the birds where you want them.

A drive is not a flush of a flock of Pheasants which can be shot out of the sky en-masse, the drive by the beaters is done throught the woods (which have been managed) to produce a steady flush of birds.

I've never shot driven birds but it's not as easy as people think. I shall return to face any flak later.......

[ed_blackadder_1]

My OH beats on a local estate in the winter and yes you're right CD its not as easy as you would think.
The birds that are shot are picked up and sold either to beaters or local shops, they are good eating and very cheap usually a couple of quid a brace, sadly the same cannot be said for the ones killed on the roads. Where we live we are constantly honking our horns at them,

I am a country girl and not a fan of hunting. But when the end product is eaten then I think that's alright.

[cee-dee]

Wot? No flak? Disapointed now and thank you Ed.

Pheasants are not just "Pheasants". There's a few shooters favourites. Everyone must have seen the common Ringneck but there's the Blackneck too, an old breed. Bazanty are testing fliers but amongst the pure breeds there's the cross-breeds. It depends on your ground as to what breed(s) you choose.

The Melanistic Mutant is pretty recogniseable and if you see Pheasants regularly, you won't mistake one. Also, highly coloured Pheasants may be a hybrid with some Melanistic in the mix.

Some breeds are wanderers (common Ringneck?) and others have a tendancy to remain in a relatively small area if there's plenty of food.

If you're able to watch Pheasants, you might find that they wander about on a regular time-scale, heading out to feed in the mornings and if there's a lot of birds, large flocks gradually disperse to small groups for the day before wandering back to roost. The male birds may have a large harem of around a dozen hens and if you're very close, you might hear a very quiet "clucking" sound as the group wander along. Late afternoon, I had a regular harem walking along the field next to my wood and was able to hide only a few feet away to wach them walk past as they headed back "home" to roost in a dense, rough bank covered by small trees and bushes. Lovely birds to watch.

As to eating Pheasant, it depends on your taste or how you were introduced to it. I've only eaten Pheasant fresh but some people used to claim it should be eaten after being hung for some time until "high". Ugh, YUK, no fang kyu!

At the homes of "The Landed Gentry" there would be a Game room where (yes, you've guessed it) Game would be kept. The room was very cold but dry and there would be rows and rows of curved hooks where shot birds would be hung by the neck. I don't know how true or widespread the practice was but old books on game shooting claimed a Pheasant was ready for eating when the body dropped off the head. YUK.

At one time, Rook shooting was popular and of course, there was Rook Pie.... May was the time for Rook shooting and I'll never forget the dozen Rooks I found hanging in an out-building (the smell was what made me look hard in to the dark corner). On mentioning it to the old chap where I was apprenticed he told me that they "had to be high" and that it was considered quite normal to find maggots floating in the gravy...... You can rest assured that nothing but nothing would ever persuade me to try Rook pie! No, I've never tried Waterhen either!

If you think some of the old practices around shooting days of old are disgusting, I can't think of anything more so than Larks Tongues on toast for breakfast? A man would have gone out at dawn to return with up to 200 Larks to supply the delicacy. YUK.

[rainydaywoman11]

Very interesting post Cee Dee.  I go through phases of what non fiction to read, and am currrently reading about life, society and the landed gentry before the Great War.  I am very interested in one book I was given at Christmas as it lists all the great houses that were demolished , with the peak after the Second World War.  Somewhat strangely, it was Harold Wilson's government in the 1960s who stopped this destruction and attempted to preserve some of those that would no doubt have disappeared.

One of the most famous of these houses, Wentworth in Yorkshire, wasa surrounded by 70 collieries, employing tens of thousands of men.  After the 2nd World War, Manny Shinwell, out of pure spite, decreed that the land surrounding it, up to 10 feet from the property itself, could be mined.  You'd have to see the pictures to believe it (Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey is the book).  In this house, guests were given confetti, which they sprinkled onto the floor, so they could find their way back to their rooms!  The poor maids had to clean this up every day.  Unimaginable really.  A visit to  Wentworth is on my bucket list, just because. 

Of course, it was the short time that Edward VII was on the throne, and boy, what a life these people lived.  I love the 'downstairs' aspect of it too, and have read about some of the practices you describe in your post.  My goodness, we think there is a divide nowadays, them and us, but then these people lived a life the working class man could only dream about.  

I have a pheasant (Casanova I call him), with a harem, we are semi rural here.  We have a red squirrel too, seen often, which is so fabulous.  Can't and don't eat game, I simply do not like the taste.

[fishpieface]

Wow, how interesting Cee-0Dee & Rainy and Captain, your new friend is lovely.

Years ago I used to drive a country bus route and pheasants were always jumping in front of the bus.

One time I braked, not particularly hard, to avoid one and somebody's tray of eggs (yes, it was just sitting

in the luggage tray on the bus) went all over the place!  The stuff people carried home on that bus never

ceased to amaze me - someone took their bike home on the bus once 'cos they'd got a puncture - and they

left it there.  We left it there too overnight and they just collected it off the bus the next day.

I also stopped that bus to let about 100 dear across a lane on the route, and another time for a mummy duck

and her ten little ducklings.

There wern't many passengers and we would often run empty - those that did come on the bus used to know

us by name (and vice-versa) and bring us allsorts of things like cakes, thermoses of hot drink and produce

from their gardens.  At pheasant time of year it was like an obstacle course trying to avoid them all!

[cee-dee]

I'm pleased you found my post interesting.

Buried in one of my lists of favourites is this link which you'll probably find interesting too :-

http://lh.matthewbeckett.com/lh_complete_list.html

Most people have little idea about what life was really like for either the Gentry or their workers. As with everything else, there were extremes both ways. Some were absolutely objectionable characters and others were benevolent.

I've mostly found the latter and over time, I only had a poor experience with two Lords.

My paternal grandparents lived in a Lodge and my grandmother was expected to run out to open the Lodge gates. After a while there, because grandad developed arthritis and couldn't do his usual work, the Estate let them have a smallholding where they had hundreds of hens. When they got too old to look after that, the Estate "did up" a house in the village as the "Alms houses" were all occupied. The same family still own that Estate.

Another Estate (I can see the Grand House from here) was also benevolent to its workers and in the 80s, a tenant farmer was approaching retirement so the Estate spent £15,000 "doing up" a village house for him and his wife. Loyalty was rewarded like that on some estates.

Living on such Estates meant that you were expected to conform to some standards of behaviour and vandalism was unheard of except by incomers when Rural District Councils ensured some "Council Houses" were built out in the countryside.

I don't know what it is about Britain but if someone "gets on" and "does well" people seem to exhibit such a nasty attitude about them, I think it's jealousy. In America it seems that getting on and doing well is applauded, just the opposite to here? We've heard of The American Dream, why can't we have The British Dream?

That nasty, mean attitude was extended to our Landed Gentry (as shown by the spite you mentioned) and probably either in response to a few bad apples or the Nouveau Riche (who were not the real Landed Gentry) who "got" land after the Industrial Revoluton.

Many of those "Lost Country Houses" would be most difficult to keep up today. In their day, they needed a vast army of servants (!!) just to keep the place clean and deal with the fires (in the fireplaces). The grounds also needed a small army to look after them as did the horses, cariages and the stables. All those people had to live and be fed somewhere. Their work was virtually all hand work and time consuming and now the work is more mechanised leading to the necessity for only a miniscule number of servant workers.

One huge house I used to visit only had two housemaids and a cook/housekeeper within the house and a couple of gardeners for the grounds. In times past, the place would have been swarming with people.

Of course, some places were almost prisons ruled with a rod of iron and it's those you hear about, the others don't warrant mention because there's nothing of note to attract the sensationalist story tellers?

[cee-dee]

Ah-ha, the bus driver eh? You'll like this one:-

My father was driving a 72 seater coach along one of the Motorways (I forget which one) which had cut through a huge wooded area. As he drove along he spotted a Pheasant at the side of the road and "just knew" what it was going to do!

Yep, just as he got near, it took off straight in front of him ****THWACK****, it hit that enormous windscreen which shattered (a Triplex screen?) covering father with glass. Fortunately......... he was wearing sunglasses so none went in his eyes. He "held on tight" and brought the coach to a safe halt on the hard shoulder and all the passenders applauded.

[mouse4702]

I've got a book, I think it was privately printed, about a local house and estate (now gone of course), and how they operated back in the day.  They had practically NO rubbish; what wasn't eaten or used on the garden was burnt and the ashes used on the garden.  At the nearest large town, there was a shop selling only corks, and a shop selling only yeast.  Talk about self-sufficiency; almost everything you needed was home produced so very little needed to be brought in from outside the county.  Come to think of it, the corks would have been bought in... 

[ed_blackadder_1]

Really interesting posts guys.

My paternal grandparents were both workers on country estates when they were young, my grandmother was in service as a maid, and my grandfather worked on a different estate with his father being a game keeper. My maternal grandfather was a milkman with a horse and cart, and grandmother was a seamstress who took in mending and made dresses for the local gentry, her mother was a lace maker, so my roots are definitely set in the country with links to the landed gentry.

[cee-dee]

The Estate where I lived was also pretty much self sufficient.

Not far from the smallholding (see posts above) was the most beautiful lake, people called it "The Pool".

I don't know where the water came from (springs I guess) but there were several outfalls. It had been increased in size by having two embankments built and at one end was a sawmill powered by a turbine.

As times changed, the Estate increased the size of "The Estate Yard" and moved the sawmill there and the old one became disused. I don't know what supplied the power in the Estate Yard initially but latterly it was a Diesel engine, one of those horizontal single cylinder things with huge flywheels.

Long before "my time" they used to produce their own Gas in that yard (I don't know how), make their own bricks (again, I don't know what they used for fuel) but they were still cutting up their own trees and producing all sorts of timber products. They used to make all their own window frames, doors, floorboards, skirtings and everything needed for building and maintaining houses plus all the fencing, gates and gateposts for the farms.

Some miles away was another lake made by damming a stream by building an embankment which also had a sawmill there for a different part of the Estate. That lake has now been drained and it's all covered by trees and bushes, good for Pheasants?

[dairyview123]

Some lovely interesting facts there folks thanks, here is our little lodger!

[ed_blackadder_1]

Cheeky ♥