Pleasant Pheasant

Click to see the image crop at 100% showing the full detail.

Last Sunday, I spent an afternoon out in the sun with family at a park and garden that we often like to visit, Marks Hall, near Colchester, Essex. The actual hall in the name has long since vanished, but what remains is a small but beautiful walled garden, surrounded by a larger garden, arboretum, all set in beautiful open countryside and woodland. It’s a fantastic place to unwind outside the city of London.

On this particular spring day, the park was alive with the sound of pheasants calling, and displaying , beating their wings to attract a mate and assert their dominance.

Most kept a good distance, but as we sat down mid-afternoon for an ice cream ( mmmm ice cream ), right next to the cafe and car park, one particular pheasant strutted into view near a bird feeder, some 3 meters away. It didn’t seem too bothered by us. Very slowly, I raised the camera, so as not to scare it and rattled off a few shots, such as this one ( cropped version above ) :

Full frame of cropped shot at top of page.

After a couple of minutes though the pheasant got bored. It wasn’t calling or displaying which was a shame, but it was nice too see so closely, and capture it with the camera. I really like the super strong front light. That is too say, the sun was more or less directly behind me, so lighting on the pheasant was crisp quite even, resulting in sparkling colours and contrast, but without half the animal in shadow. I would have liked to have been more to my left to reduce the shadowing even further, but with wildlife photography, one often has to take what one gets !

After a long walk, I managed to shoot images of other birds, such as canada and greylag geese. These images were ok, but I’d really liked the strong front light on the above image.

So, later when we returned to the car park, I checked the bird feeder again, and low and behold the pheasant was there again. And this time, he was in more active mood and was displaying ! He called out loudly and beat his wings, then stood there in a wonderful strong dominant pose. I was most impressed !

Had I not gone back and checked the location of the feeder again, I would have missed these shots, and they are by far my favourite shots of the weekend.

If you happen upon a great location, or subject, but it’s not quite as you’d like, check back later if you can and you might stumble upon something that you least expect. This happens more often than you might think, often I’m almost ready to pack up for the day, when I stumble upon a great opportunity.

Or should that be a pleasant pheasant.