Pheasant Laughter
Saturday, 20th November 2004
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary
Pheasant Laughter
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The broad white ring around his neck reminds me of those worn by the 'self-styled floppy-collared-clown-prince-of-daft', Harry Hill, who, I discover when I take a look at his website (see link below) is also a painter in an English pop art tradition. His paintings echo the world of the shows, which I first came across on radio - which I feel is a very visual medium - and include characters who wouldn't look out of place in a Peter Blake painting. My favourite was Chief Scientist (and greengrocer, if I remember rightly) Finsbury Park . . . The Great Ash
Related Link
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk |
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There's
a tapping and my first impression is that it's our next door hammering
but we soon realise that it's a pheasant - Bar-none,
to be precise - pecking at the patio window. If we laid a trail of corn
he'd come in!
I've
got to go through with it sometime: we walk along the stream-side path
where they felled the big ash tree to make way for a housing development.
I hadn't realised it was such a large stump and, as a neighbour commented,
with not a trace of rot. It would have outlived us all. The estimate of
150 years as its age might be an underestimate if the girth is anything
to go by.
It's
good to do our regular longer walk to Thornhill again. There's a feeling
of winter rather than autumn today. It feels as if the season has changed.
This stark, simple landscape is just what I needed, as is the flask of
tea at the cold metal bench in Thornhill Park. We bring a couple of foam
kneeler pads with us to sit on but our backs leave circles of condensation
where we've been leaning back. 
Harry
Hill