to be delighted a fox killed a pheasant

[CaresMildly]

Thus giving me some rather attractive feathers to liven up the Easter table centrepiece.

Feathers on a table and attractive centrepiece in the same sentence?

There is a shoot going on behind my cottage as we speak........pheasant galore, I'm quite glad actuallly because of all the fecking skwarking that's been going on at 5.30am.

Not the season for shooting pheasants, they shouldn't be doing it.

Wouldn't it have been better if the pheasant had done something like kill itself by flying into the wall of your house so that you had not only feathers but a game bird nicely hung for your Easter lunch?

(I was once staying in a house where a pheasant did dispatch itself by flying through a window, very tasty it was too though one had to check for glass instead of the normal lead shot)

Really Worra? They grace the best heads you know.

Well the guns are going off, maybe it's the partridge they are after, I'll ask the gamekeeper should I see him.

Not the season for shooting pheasants, they shouldn't be doing it.
No, they shouldn't. Maybe they're shooting rabbits but the commotion is putting up the pheasants?

i think all game birds are out of season now!

they might be after rabbits, though and, er, accidentally hit birds.....

Shouldn't be shooting partridge either. Could be pigeons (real or clay) maybe?

There seems to be lots of gangs of partridge about at the moment, but my the pheasants are loud.

sorry, Grimma, cross post. Must type faster.

Really Worra? They grace the best heads you know

Yeah so do head lice....

The fields they shoot in behind my house have rapeseed growing in them the at moment, I can hear the guns going off though, we do get the odd poacher but not being a real country girl I always assume they after birds of some kind, the gamekeeper likes to give me dead things I have no idea what to do with.

gangs of partridge? do they wear hoodies and spray paint your fences

It may not be guns that you can hear, could be bird scarers.

I would prefer if the pheasant had killed the fox tbh. Bastard foxes - lost too many chickens and rabbits to have any like at all for them. Bring back hunting I say.

They are like gangs, noisy little gangs, there are always about five together causing trouble

I've never met anyone with such a downer on pheasant feathers before.

Were you by any chance the owner of the window at Grimma's lunch party?

I just think they look cheap and naff!

Still at least you didn't have to pay for them

UANBU
Anything that reduces the pheasant population is fine by me.

£50 excess to gets new windscreen does not make them my favourite creatures.

Their feathers are beautiful, though.

Intigued now as to which type of feather would be acceptable?

Feathers are not cheap. I should know - I've had to buy them for millinery purposes.

Spent months looking for appropriate roadkill to avoid the expense too [grumpy]

Tiago, you could chase them and grab their feathers, they are very docile I see at least one dead one on the road per week.

Grimma "I was once staying in a house where a pheasant did dispatch itself by flying through a window, very tasty it was too though one had to check for glass instead of the normal lead shot"

My dad got several pheasants that flew at his car. Apparently if they just got a glancing blow rather than hitting it full on then it didn't smash them up but stunned them for long enough that he could hop out and wring their neck to finish the job. Tasty meal indeed.

DH (still DH-to-be at the time) and I were with him once when this happened as he was giving us a lift to the railway station to get the train home. He offered us the pheasant to take back with us but we had to turn him down. I mean, can you imagine sitting for two hours on a crowded train carrying a large dead bird? Even if it did have pretty feathers.....