02 April 2016

Young pheasant, No. 1 Line

On the way back from a walk up the No. Line track this afternoon, I drove around a bend and saw a female pheasant sprinting along the road. I slowed the car, and when she ducked through the fence into the paddock, I stopped the car. Fortunately, I had the camera on the seat next to me and the window down. I didn't manage a photograph of her, but did get a few of the two poults with her. Most of the photographs were hazy because of intervening out-of-focus grasses and weeds, but this one turned out OK after a bit of fiddling with the contrast and clarity.

I never fail to get a thrill from seeing wild pheasants.

[f4 at 1/100 sec.; ISO 200]



All content © 2016 Pete McGregor

2 comments:

Zhoen said...

So much what dinosaur cousins looked like, I imagine. If as a kid I could have seen them as feathered and possibly brightly colored, I think I'd've been a lot more interested. Ancient and spare creatures, with long, long, long lineages.

pohanginapete said...

Zhoen, yes, I agree — that head in particular looks so dinosaur-like. Harder to imagine birds like finches as dinosaurs, but the one that's impossible to look at and not think Archaeopteryx is the hoatzin. When I visited the Amazon I was hanging out to see a hoatzin, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. Crazy, wonderful dinosaurs that didn't quite complete the transition to birds.