FOXGLOVE

Why not fence them, I hear you ask. Because we want them to stay wild, and because predators are cannier than pheasants - I admit that almost anything is cannier than a pheasant - and it is easy for them to be caught against a fence.

Not just pheasants either, for recently and in another place, I found a hedgehog helpless against a rabbit fence. Fortunately for the hedgepig, I came along before the badger did, and so managed to free him.

This morning is sunny, and the pheasants have followed the sun into the meadows, where they are pecking amongst a late hatching of crane flies. Starting at the road end, I send the dogs forward, while my friend who has the gun walks parallel to us through the woods.

If the dogs flush anything that needs shooting, we are equipped, though as we have three dogs, that might or might not be illegal depending on what we flush. Is a terrier a whole dog, or can it be counted as a fraction of the smaller of the two other dogs? It is too early for this kind of calculation.

The terrier, fraction or complete, bustles through the cover and pushes out errant pheasants. The lurchers herd other pheasants in the open, keeping them on the move but not getting so close that they run too fast.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette October 3