Misconception

                                                                                   Common Pheasant

 

Dear Reader,

Each year 40 million pheasants are released into the countryside only to be shot.  That is what they are bred for.  The first pheasants were introduced nearly a thousand years ago from the mountains of Georgia, but the most common varieties now come from western China.

Pheasants are large, long tailed game birds.  The males have rich a dark green head, with chestnut, golden brown and black markings on their bodies and tails.  Pheasants can be found on woodland, farmland, scrub and wetlands.  But in its natural habitat the common pheasant lives in grasslands near water with small copses of trees.  

Pheasants are gregarious birds and outside the breeding season form loose flocks.  Whenever they are hunted they are always timid.  Once they associate humans with danger and will quickly retreat for safety after hearing the arrival of hunting parties.

                                                                   

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From Gerald Manley Hopkins, 1873, October 29th, in Surrey

'Wonderful downpour of leaf: when the morning sun began to melt the frost they fell at one touch and in a few minutes  a whole tree was flung of them; they lay masking and papering the ground at the foot.   Then the tree seems to be looking down on its cast self as blue sky on snow after a long fall, its losing, its doing.'

From Dorothy Wordsworth, 1800, October 31st, in Windermere

'A very fine moonlight night - the moon shone like herrings in the water.'

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Misconception

The woman thought when she left
the office building would explode,
blood from her willing heart
would drip from the ceiling,
pieces of her goodwill,
her ready smile,
possibly her arms and legs,
would drop into waste bins,
flow out of filing cabinets,
strew the carpet with bits of herself.
The atmosphere would be dank
with the tears for the loss of her.
She knew her worth.

In the spring, Sandra met her.
Karen, from Accounts,
now has her job, she said.
She is brilliant, everyone loves her.

The woman walked away,
mantled in her goodness,
surprised at what poor judgements
people make.

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With best wishes, Patricia