Playing space evaders

If you asked an experienced pigeon shooter to name the highlights of their year, I’m pretty certain that the time of the newly sown peas would come reasonably high on their list. Pigeons have an uncanny instinct for a good thing. Shrivelled, bullet-hard seed peas are one of them. To human eyes, they look like a shortcut to a bad attack of heartburn. But not to a pigeon.

You can drill peas, roll them, choose any way you can devise to cover them with a decent coating of soil, and the pigeon will still find them. Last week I was invited to have a go at defending such a crop on some of the rich Hampshire acres over