The next shooting season
WHILST our species is being tested, our earthly cohabitants continue much as before. My first swallows arrived on 12 April with their usual but wonderful punctuality. While we marvel at their timekeeping we should not be surprised. Nature keeps to her timetable, be it the successive hatching of brimstone, peacock and orange tip to the blossoming of blackthorn and the laying and theft of eggs.
Our gamebirds are subject to the same seasonal dictates, which is why a belligerent cock pheasant stood his territorial ground until my Sealyhams finally broke and tried to scrag him.
