My Garden and Other Animals

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Mike Dilger. My Garden and Other Animals

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To the three women in my life:

Christina, Mum and Hilary

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In our previous Bristol garden I would never have expected to see a pheasant, and even in our new garden I wouldn’t have shortened the odds that much at the chance of adding the species to my garden list. With a moment’s reflection, though, maybe its appearance shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. For starters, Chew Stoke is a small, rural village set in the countryside, and due to our street being tucked away in the southeastern corner, as the pheasant walks our garden was probably no more than a couple of hundred yards from the nearest arable fields. Hadn’t Dennis also said only a couple of hours previously that they did occasionally turn up in his garden too?

I have watched pheasants in the British countryside on thousands of occasions, so what we were looking at, in isolation, wasn’t a particularly rare sighting. But watching one on our own lawn, I can officially confirm, was a hundred times better, because it was the most glorious vindication of our policy to break down one of the main barriers to our garden. By making our border porous, the effect had been the equivalent of laying down a green carpet of invitation – with the pheasant, hopefully, being the first of many more animals to accept!

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