Flashbird, So Vivid, A Little Cornucopia

In a hide at Amwell Nature Reserve. Very poor November afternoon light. The first time I've shot a bird using the in-camera flash. I won't be making a habit of it but the artificial light has brought out the beautiful colours of the cock pheasant's plumage. I've included a characterful shot taken without flash in extras.

Looking for a title I stumbled upon this poem by Sylvia Plath. It was written soon after her son was born. Ted Hughes was cheating on her. Evidently she's not talking about animal rights but using the pheasant as an analogy for love and referring to her relationship with Hughes. :( 

Pheasant
You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing

Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.

I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.

That gives it a kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court

The wonder of it, in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.

But a dozen would be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill-green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!

It is such a good shape, so vivid.
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,

Settles in the elm, and is easy.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.