Common pheasant

The Common pheasant is one of the principal quarry animals in Helen Macdonald’s account of goshawks, but its importance extends beyond its place in the hunt. A pheasant killed during Macdonald’s first experience of falconry makes predation concrete and unsettling; years later, a pheasant pursued by Mabel the goshawk helps draw Macdonald into the shared work of hunting. Across these scenes, the bird marks a change in Macdonald’s relation to death, wild animals, and her own role in the field.

First Encounter: A Kill and Its Remains

When Macdonald was twelve, she accompanied falconers on a winter outing. The group crossed fields of new wheat beneath flocks of fieldfares, and a goshawk made a short dive from an oak into a hedge, where it killed a pheasant. The action was swift; the men retrieved the dead bird and placed it in a hawking bag. Macdonald stood apart, unsure how to understand what she had seen. Her attention shifted from the falconers to the light among the branches, then back to the hedge where the hawk had made its kill.

There she found six copper-colored pheasant feathers caught in blackthorn. She collected them one by one and held them in her closed hand, treating the small remains as a way of keeping the moment. The feathers give the scene a physical afterlife: the pheasant is gone from view, but its traces remain with Macdonald. The encounter is described not as a simple initiation into sport but as an early confrontation with death and with feelings she cannot yet name.

Quarry and the Social World of Falconry

The pheasant also locates falconry within a social landscape. Macdonald’s first outing introduced her to men whose manner and clothing signaled a world in which she felt uncertain of belonging. She wanted to become a falconer, yet wondered whether these men would regard her as an outsider. The kill intensified that first encounter, joining the social unease of the gathering to the practical fact of what a hunting hawk does.

Elsewhere, Macdonald contrasts the access required to fly falcons with the close-range hunting style of goshawks. Properly flying falcons requires extensive open ground, such as grouse moors, partridge manors, and large farms—resources more readily available to the wealthy or well connected. Her account of Maine offers a different contrast: there, hunting is described as broadly accessible under common law, unlike Britain’s tradition of exclusive land access. In that discussion, large pheasant shoots are associated with wealthy participants competing over their bags. The pheasant thus belongs not only to the encounter between hawk and quarry, but also to the human arrangements that determine who can hunt and where.

The Pheasant Hunt with Mabel

After Macdonald’s father dies, a pheasant hunt with Mabel the goshawk makes the human role in the pursuit newly immediate. The pheasant crashes into brambles beneath a tall hedge, while Mabel lands above it and waits. Macdonald runs through muddy ground and thorny vegetation, trying to locate the concealed bird and work out what the hawk is doing. The hunt depends on their differing positions: Mabel watches from the hedge, while Macdonald searches below and may need to flush the pheasant into view.

As she tries to follow both animals’ positions, Macdonald describes her sense of self as dividing between the hawk above and the pheasant in the brambles. For a time she feels detached from her ability to affect events. The pheasant’s eventual emergence and Mabel’s rush toward it bring the separate lines of the scene together. Unlike the childhood kill, in which Macdonald stood at a distance, this pursuit places her inside the sequence of actions that makes the hunt possible. The pheasant is not merely an emblem in that change: its concealment, the hawk’s waiting, and the handler’s search shape what each participant can do.

Narrative Significance

Across the two hunts, the Common pheasant recurs at moments when Macdonald’s understanding of falconry changes. The first kill leaves her with feathers and an unresolved response to death; the later pursuit makes her conscious of how closely her own attention and movement are bound to the hawk’s actions. Together, the scenes shift her from a child watching falconers to a handler whose decisions and perceptions form part of the hunt. The pheasant’s role is therefore both material and narrative: it is quarry pursued by a goshawk, and the point around which Macdonald’s changing relation to hunting becomes visible.