Pheasant

Pheasants recur as prey in Helen Macdonald’s account of training Mabel, but they are not merely a measure of the goshawk’s skill. Their presence brings the hunt into shared spaces, where a bird’s quick decisions can overturn the falconer’s plans. Across encounters with hens, chicks, and cocks, pheasants draw out Mabel’s inherited interest in gamebirds and Macdonald’s struggle to balance that interest with restraint, permission, and responsibility.

Recognition and the first encounter

Mabel’s attention to pheasants precedes her first close encounter with one. Macdonald finds that the young goshawk can distinguish gamebirds even in spare drawings: she ignores pictures of finches, seabirds, and thrushes, but fixes on images of partridges and a pheasant. The recognition suggests that the category of quarry is already meaningful to Mabel, before she has encountered these birds in a hunt. Her response is not simply to a moving animal in the field; a minimal image is enough to hold her attention.

The following day, a hen pheasant and six partly feathered chicks appear on a playing field. The hen sees Mabel and reacts to the danger, but her choices are constrained by the chicks following her: she hesitates between taking flight and remaining still, then runs across the open ground. Mabel strains toward the family, beating her wings so forcefully that she hangs nearly horizontal. Macdonald turns to block the view and asks Christina to guide the pheasants back behind the railings, while Christina also drives nearby moorhens away. The episode ends without a capture. The hen’s attempt to keep her chicks together and the human effort to redirect them make this more than a demonstration of Mabel’s hunting instinct: it is a moment in which several beings respond to one another under pressure, while Macdonald decides that this is not a hunt she will allow to proceed.

Quarry, setting, and restraint

Pheasants return as part of the wider field environment in which Macdonald flies Mabel. During one outing, three rabbits feed near the wood while a cock pheasant walks past. Macdonald raises the hawk and edges around the wood’s margin; when Mabel launches, the rabbits run and the pheasant also retreats toward cover. The sequence moves too quickly for Macdonald to control its outcome. Mabel disappears into the wood, and the sudden change from open field to dark cover leaves Macdonald unsure what has happened or where the hawk has gone. The pheasant is part of a landscape of possible quarry, but its flight helps turn the outing into a search rather than a controlled capture.

At another field, Mabel pursues a cock pheasant in strong wind. She comes close behind it, but the conditions disrupt her attack and the pheasant gains distance, climbing over the wood. Mabel follows out of view, then returns to Macdonald in a broad flight over the trees. The missed pursuit matters as much as a kill would: the pheasant escapes, while Mabel’s return reveals that the outcome of a hunt is not wholly determined by the human handler. The wind, the bird’s movement, and Mabel’s own flight all shape what happens.

Successful hunts and their consequences

A later pursuit brings Macdonald and Mabel into a field where a cock pheasant runs through cover. Mabel closes on it and binds to it; Macdonald, who has been searching for the bird, describes the moment as also restoring the connections among herself, the hawk, and the pheasant. That brief sense of alignment does not make the encounter simple. The pheasant is the focus of a real hunt, and the event joins Macdonald’s attention to the positions of predator and prey with the practical fact of Mabel’s capture.

In another outing, Mabel stoops into an area crowded with pheasants. Macdonald hears her bell and follows, unable to prevent the pursuit. Mabel catches a cock bird after it runs through the wood. Macdonald gathers the pheasant, conceals it in her waistcoat, and covers the scene with leaves before leaving. As she crosses the field, cocks across the surrounding area begin calling together. She experiences their calls as an accusation: the hunt has taken place on a shoot without permission, and the concealment that follows makes the trespass impossible to treat as an abstract mishap. The pheasants’ calls persist in her conscience as she drives away.

An even more precarious encounter takes place in a pheasant-release pen. A wet cock breaks from cover close to Macdonald and Mabel, clears a high fence, and disappears into dense planting inside the enclosure. Macdonald finds an open door and runs in after the hawk. Mabel then pursues a hen pheasant at the far side of the pen. When Macdonald reaches her, another hen emerges from under Mabel’s wing, leaving the hawk with a pheasant in each foot. Macdonald takes Mabel from the birds and carries the pheasants away, acutely aware that she has entered a managed enclosure and could be challenged by its keeper. The scene makes the consequences of an uncontrolled pursuit concrete: the birds are caught, the hunt has crossed a boundary, and Macdonald must leave quickly rather than present the event as an authorized flight.

What the pheasants reveal

The recurring pheasant encounters show the limits of treating quarry as a passive object in falconry. Hens and chicks move in response to danger; cocks flee into cover or across it; wind and fences alter the possibilities of pursuit. These actions shape the hunt alongside Mabel’s trained responses and Macdonald’s decisions. At the playing field, she intervenes to send the birds away. In the open field, she watches a pheasant escape. In the release pen, she cannot prevent Mabel from pursuing and has to manage the aftermath.

Pheasants also mark the changing moral and practical stakes of flying Mabel. A drawing first brings out the goshawk’s focused recognition of gamebirds; later, living birds test the handler’s ability to read and redirect her. Successful captures can produce a moment of close attention, but they also entail obligations to the prey, to the rules governing land, and to the people who manage it. The pheasant’s recurring role is therefore not simply to confirm that Mabel can hunt. Each encounter exposes how the outcome is shared among the hawk’s drive, the prey’s attempts to escape, the conditions of the place, and Macdonald’s responsibility for the flight.