Clive Wilkinson, of Rothbury, muses on the life and times of an avian pal and the lessons to be learned for our own country lives…
There’s a pheasant that lives somewhere in the tangled hedge of ash, blackthorn and hawthorn, elder and bramble that marks the northern boundary to the field next door. We call him Charlie. He was there when we moved in, but as that was twenty-four years ago, and we don’t think pheasants live that long, we think it must be a dynasty, and he must be Charles XXIV.