Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I decided that I needed a little sequence of sketches of the pheasants fighting, this is them squaring up to each other.
They circled, trying to outflank each other then they’d both leap up, sometimes striking out with their feet like a pair of heraldic beasts, then coming back low to the ground.
Back in January, we watched these cock pheasants squaring up to each other in Coxley on a slope in Sun Wood between the upper and lower dams. It started like a Sumo contest with the rivals bowing as low as possible but simultaneously fluffing out their feathers to look intimidating, all the time nodding menacingly and occasionally making a rapier-like thrust with the beak at the opponent’s throat.
This would bubble up into sparring a foot or two from the ground. Considering how vocal male pheasants can be, there was surprisingly little grockling to accompany the bluster, just a short call as they came back down to the ground.
Pools have formed in the lower corners of fields, one of these temporary lagoons has a small muddy island with just enough room for the three mallards that are standing on it.
Trees were slow to turn colour this autumn but now there’s an ochre harmony to the foliage and increasingly they’ve lost there leaves. These poplars in a shelter belt at Dobbies Pennine Garden Centre, Shelley, on the 210 metre (656 feet) contour, overlooking the valley of Sheply Dike, are just clinging on to their topmost leaves, which is the opposite to maples and ash that I’ve seen that have been losing their top leaves first.