A Spooky Encounter
Last night, alone indoors, with the outside dark and windy, I suddenly heard several fearful thumps and scratchings on one of the living room windows. I couldn't see anything when I looked out that window.
I turned on the patio light on that side of the house and still couldn't see anything--until I stepped outside and looked along the outside wall toward the window. There was the culprit, a resplendent cock pheasant standing in the flowerbed. Startled at my presence, he flew straight up and floundered north over the adjacent yew at the corner of the house. So I thought.
Hiromi had just come home (I saw his lights and the pheasant at about the same time), bringing along groceries and Marcus, who Hiromi had brought home from one of the classes he attends. He wondered if I had enough supper for one more person. I did.
Marcus and Hiromi both made several trips in and out between the car and the house. On the last trip, that pheasant flew out of the yew in front of Hiromi, apparently headed for safer parts farther north in the landscape.
The whole event is still puzzling. Why was that bird moving about after dark? What made it crash into the window? Except on our 3-acre property, there's a whole lot of nothing in terms of wildlife cover on this section (640 acres), so if he had taken cover at nightfall, it must have been somewhere very close.
Since we seeded grass this fall, we have been irrigating regularly, and in one place in particular, some water accumulates sometimes. We've noticed that birds are attracted to this standing water, because it's dry elsewhere. Did the pheasant come for a drink toward evening and then stay for the night? Did the light in the window somehow confuse him about the time of day?
I much prefer seeing these magnificent birds in broad daylight, but an interesting bird is always welcome in my view, even in the windy dark.
Comments are welcome from anyone who understands a pheasant brain better than I do.
I turned on the patio light on that side of the house and still couldn't see anything--until I stepped outside and looked along the outside wall toward the window. There was the culprit, a resplendent cock pheasant standing in the flowerbed. Startled at my presence, he flew straight up and floundered north over the adjacent yew at the corner of the house. So I thought.
Hiromi had just come home (I saw his lights and the pheasant at about the same time), bringing along groceries and Marcus, who Hiromi had brought home from one of the classes he attends. He wondered if I had enough supper for one more person. I did.
Marcus and Hiromi both made several trips in and out between the car and the house. On the last trip, that pheasant flew out of the yew in front of Hiromi, apparently headed for safer parts farther north in the landscape.
The whole event is still puzzling. Why was that bird moving about after dark? What made it crash into the window? Except on our 3-acre property, there's a whole lot of nothing in terms of wildlife cover on this section (640 acres), so if he had taken cover at nightfall, it must have been somewhere very close.
Since we seeded grass this fall, we have been irrigating regularly, and in one place in particular, some water accumulates sometimes. We've noticed that birds are attracted to this standing water, because it's dry elsewhere. Did the pheasant come for a drink toward evening and then stay for the night? Did the light in the window somehow confuse him about the time of day?
I much prefer seeing these magnificent birds in broad daylight, but an interesting bird is always welcome in my view, even in the windy dark.
Comments are welcome from anyone who understands a pheasant brain better than I do.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
6:08 AM
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