THE LORD PROCLAIMS HIS DOMINION

This morning as I was gazing trainwaitingly over the same lakeside strip of land regarding which last week I posted about the ducks landing and feeding there (today the ducks were feeding further to the north on the strip), my blurgaze was suddenly focused by a loud squawk from right out there in the golden stubble of the Spring wildfield, the 'there' concurrently advertised by a bright flurry of flashing wings.

It was Lord Pheasant atop one of the many low promontories that stud his realm, a wild Chanticleer every few minutes briefly proclaiming his dominion over all the lands hereabouts in no uncertain terms, brooking no argument and getting none. Strutting, preening and gleaming like any natural tyrant, he paraded the pinnacle of his eminent worthiness as his harem fed invisibly in the bent grasses of the lower places around him.

In the last couple of years several houses have gone up here and there on the Lord's vast territory and encroached on the necessary wildness of his birthright, but he doesn't seem to mind since he owns the houses as well, to say nothing of the sky, the lake and the railway, all of which his worship graciously permits us unfeathered, earthbound creatures to employ in getting cumbersomely from here to there for all the incomprehensible purposes we seem to have.

He would not be amused to learn that these creatures have named him the national bird.