Run, you stupid bird!

Not me, different stupid bird! Went out for a run the other morning having told husband to prod me with a stick if the alarm didn't seem to wake me. He grunted "alarm" at me and I hauled myself up. It was 6am and it was still pretty much dark! I get the feeling running in the wintertime is going to take some serious willpower.

Anyway, I went out and the sun was just coming up. It was nice, it really was. I ran along a road which goes between a golf course and some fields where sheep, goats and horses are kept. There were rabbits grazing (is that what you call what rabbits do? Or nibbling?) and plenty of birds around. Then a large male pheasant wandered out of the hedge right in front of me. It took one look at the vision of loveliness that is me in my running gear (stretchy lycra crop trousers from Asda, knock-off Calvin Klein t-shirt now 5 sizes too big but I like it, and VERY red face) pounding towards it and it took fright. Naturally. But instead of either going back where it had just come from or indeed FLYING AWAY (cos it's a bird) it started to run away. Up the path in front of me. I kept going. Pheasant kept running. Straight ahead. It was obviously panicking that I was chasing it and was too dim to turn left. Or right. Or fly. Eventually it ran through a gap in the hedge and disappeared from sight, but only because the path turned a corner and the gap was therefore straight ahead. I suspect that if the gap hadn't been right in front of the bird's nose , I mean beak, it would have missed it and be running still. I will make no comment whatsover on the fact that the pheasant was male and any implications that may or may not have for its ability to find anything which is not right in front of it.