Outdoor Daily

I don’t know what happened to the’owner’ of these particular set of feathers…

Every year, around 25000 pheasant chicks are reared on the nearby estate the locals call ‘the big house’. Then they are released and fed up, to be shot by people paying substantial sums of money. They shoot all day and take home a couple of braces, no matter how many dozen they’ve killed. The rest? There’s not much of a market, so thousands are dumped in the ‘dead pit’ on the estate. About half survive each season and spread out…

There are a number of issues I have with this particular ‘sport’ and its industry. One major concern being that these birds are not native, occupying in their thousands a niche that isn’t theirs.

…so it’s pleasing to see that some pheasants suffer the natural fate of becoming food for the native wildlife. Foxes, birds of prey, eventually crows, invertebrates and bacteria…

… others are devastating my vegetable garden!