Country diary: If there's such a thing as an unnatural bird, it's this | Mark Cocker

Northumberland: Millions of pheasants are released each year, and this was just a few hundred of them - confused and distressed, not quite wild, not quite domesticatedOur sense of unease arose slowly. Initially it was inspired by nothing more than the maze of rat runs through the lank grass - a warren of paths spreading outwards in all directions. Who could have made these, was our first question. It might have been rabbits, but every step was marked by a slug-like dark squidge streaked with urea: bird excrement.Suddenly, here was the source, and instinctively your eye was drawn to the distilled beauty of a camouflaged plumage. Except that any aesthetic sense was at odds with the weirdness of the birds' behaviour. Pheasants - dozens, scores, hundreds eventually - careered off, but not in a single line driven by instinct. They ran in loops as if they had no idea whether they should come towards us as domesticated stock, or run away as wild animals. Continue reading...