If there is a motorist in North Devon who has never hit a pheasant while driving I’d like to know whether they ever actually take to the road more than once in a blue moon. Poor old pheasants, bred to be gunned down or doomed to be run over. I don’t suppose they have a view on the preferred option – I’d guess that if they could articulate their wishes they may opt for poncing around and looking quite ornamental on top of gateposts and so on until they just keeled over.
Be that as it may, I fear that was not to be the end for a hen pheasant I encountered yesterday. I was making my way along the narrow lanes near Lovacott and Horwood at a sedate pace - I am always conscious of the propensity for people who know such roads to treat them as their personal racetrack – when said hen pheasant popped out of the hedge.
I believe the Highway Code says you shouldn’t swerve to avoid such encounters if it will endanger other road users, but to be honest it all happened so quickly there was little I could do in any case. I heard a bump, but when I looked in my rear-view mirror I couldn’t see anything and when I got out of the car to look there were no grisly remains to be seen so I told my fellow passengers that “it must have just been a glancing blow” and the bird had hopped back into the hedge, probably having had a bit of a shock. Not very convincing, I know, but the best I could come up with, particularly for one passenger who claimed our close encounter of the bird kind had cast a pall over the whole day. I didn’t like to suggest it had been considerably worse for the pheasant’s Sunday.
On reflection, I don’t often see pheasant corpses on the road – especially when compared to animals such as badgers and foxes - so maybe my “glancing blow” theory was correct. Anyway, Mrs Pheasant, sorry if I spoiled your Sunday.
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