I've just ran over a pheasant :(

We've lived on land where there's a shoot for nearly 20 years now.
I know what its like to have crowds of pheasants around.
7 in a weekend or 3 in a day is an awful lot.

There wre times of the year round here when it's practically impossible to avoid baby rabbits

Me too Coal, we are surrounded by three large estates who all have big shoots, have still only managed 3 in a day though.

I counted the squashed ones on my drive this morning - 6 birds in 20 miles plus a few rabbits/hares and a deer.

Just a part of living in the countryside.

7 isn't that much if there have been a lot put down near you. There is an estate near me that puts down 100,000 each year and the ground is crawling with them in places

Great idea to post the street view of the road . Now all the posters who could 'magically' tell you were definitely speeding can STFU .

I would go 50 on that road too - (but not if it was raining or poor light). You would be able to see a child or horse from a long way off. I slow right down if there are bends or hedges.

It's just a flipping pheasant. Not an endangered tiger or anything. What's the problem? 50mph is quite slow for that kind of road. I sometimes get stuck behind someone doing 45/40 and it's very annoying.

Lets get a grip here - had it not been run over by the lovely lexiepix it would have been made to flee the sanctuary of the crops/hedge/woods by the beaters and then shot at, maybe once, maybe a few times by the guns. If it escaped there would always be the following week's shoot to contend with and so on and so on.

It was only a pheasant.

I killed a massive bird on a driving lesson. The stretch of road was notorious for flocks of them just sitting there. My instructor sat next to me saying "Keep going, don't brake" because she knew what was going trough my head.

"Keep going, they will move" as I heard the thud. "But they always move!" says she! Apparently it was the talk of the driving instructors for days.

Still, I learnt not to brake for birds.

Poor Phesant

I slow down and stop for bloody pigeons though

7 is a huge amount in a weekend.
I'd love to know how that came about.

7 is a lot good score.

This happened to me once. I was on a straight part of a country road. Either side of the road had deep ditches. Cock pheasant climbed out of ditch as I was approaching. There was a vehicle right behind me. I wasn't driving fast, but blasted pheasant, instead of staying put, continued out onto the road as I was becoming parallel with him. They have absolutely no road sense. It is a horrible feeling that something that was alive is now dead because of you. It was unpredictable. The reference someone gave with horse riders is different as they are already on the road or are so large they are visible. They don't wait hidden in a ditch and then commit a suicidal kamikazi onto approaching cars. I lived near a game reserve, so lots of these around. They used to come into my garden. Interestingly, they were one birdie my little grey cat didn't even attempt to approach.

Although a straight part of the road, you couldn't see if anything approached from the fields behind the ditch because of the hedgerows. One day, I saw a woman parked in her car, sobbing. A golden labrador had come out onto the road, and she had hit and killed him. If he was going fast, she wouldn't have been able to see him before he came out onto the road. She was in bits about it.

Country roads can be really dangerous.

7 pheasants in a weekend Eve ?
How come?

Yep, that's a narrow country lane. The left/right lanes are narrower than a normal road, and there are country fields either side.

If OP had meant a single track lane, she'd have said a single track lane (that's how we killed 7 pheasants in a weekend). But she didn't. She also said, from her very second post When I say narrow country lane I don't mean that narrow or country, its a narrow A road through farm land where it is 60. She also quantified that over and again.

It's not OPs fault that people haven't bothered to read what she wrote.

It was bred to be shot at by someone with a shotgun. It had a happy release from what may have been an agonising slow death if the shooter was not very good.
But pick it up, hang it in the shed for a few day then clean, pluck and eat. Or feed to pets if too bruised. At least it is useful then.

Dh once had a pheasant fly headfirst into his car, it managed to decapitate it's self by wedging it's head through his radiator grill! It was not pleasnt mess to clean up.

One of those 'narrow' country lanes,eh?

Ah. By narrow country lane you meant not a narrow country lane. Who knew?

See, imo you are changing your story. That picture is not of a narrow country road and there was no previous mention of a van. How can you expect sensible responses if you do not give the relevant information? And why are you still referring to running late? Either you did not slow down for safety reasons or because you were late - one is ok, one is not....

I totally agree yanbu if that is indeed the location it happened at and if there was a van behind you.

However if what you initially wrote is actually the truth then yabvvu.

Sunny I said that you could, not that you should. And yes, I'm fully aware of the punishments for exceeding the speed limit but for now I have a squeaky license although I was once caught at 128mph on a French autoroute on a run back to Calais.

OP, you're going to get a stream of people saying you misled them now, because by 'narrow country road', they thought you meant bendy and hilly with piles of dry stone wall crumbling onto it.

I drive at 50 along those too

Most country lanes are 60, nationsl soeed. limit, because there are no houses nearby. Op certainly wasn't speeding. And most of the pheasants in this country are bred and released by shooting estates. That's why they are so stupid, they are not wild in the true sense of the word.
Can't believe some of the over reactions on this thread. I bet that pheasant had a better life and death than your average supermarket chicken.

In those conditions 50 does not seem excessive. And you have road markings! Round here we do not and this means you have to drive more slowly because large numbers of the locals are not capable of working out what half the width of the road would be and keeping their vehicle within that half.