Pheasants

Pheasants are among the most consequential animals in the woodland scenes: they are raised under the gamekeeper’s care, their eggs are incubated by hens, and their first chicks draw Connie Chatterley back to the clearing day after day. Their presence links practical work in the wood with a seasonal cycle of hatching and care. For Connie, watching that cycle becomes more than an occasional diversion; it offers a living counterpoint to the emotional coldness she experiences at Wragby. The birds do not remove the pressures surrounding the wood, however. Their sheltered breeding place sits within a landscape marked by private ownership, damaged woodland, and nearby industry.

Breeding Ground and Setting

The pheasants are reared in a secluded clearing in Wragby Wood. Connie first finds the place by following a narrow track between young fir trees, drawn by the sound of hammering. There she discovers a small hut made from rustic poles, where the gamekeeper is preparing equipment for the young birds. The clearing is not part of the more open, familiar route through the wood: it is a tucked-away working space that Connie has not visited before.

The surrounding wood is both a habitat and a managed estate. Clifford Chatterley has restored the gamekeeper’s position after pheasants were killed off during the war and the wood was left without protection. His aim to protect the old oak trees and keep the place apart from the wider world forms one background to the birds’ rearing. Yet this private landscape has already been altered: timber was cut during the war, leaving a denuded rise from which Connie can see the colliery railway and new works at Stacks Gate. The birds’ clearing offers shelter within the wood, but it is not separate from the changes taking place around it.

The Keeper's Work

The gamekeeper’s care is expressed through preparation and repeated attention. When Connie arrives, he is on his knees hammering, making coops for the young birds. The hut holds the tools and materials of this work, including boards and nails, while a simple table and chair stand near the fireplace. The room is also his private refuge, so Connie’s discovery of it brings her into a space that he has tried to keep apart from other people.

As spring approaches, the keeper explains that birds must be set and that he will need to be at the clearing more often. He expects to attend to them morning and night, but tries to arrange the hut so that Connie can visit without being in his way. He tidies the interior, sets the table and chair near the fire, and puts tools and traps aside. Outside, he builds a low shelter of branches and straw, beneath which he places five coops. The provision of a roof and separate enclosures shows the practical care on which the breeding effort depends; the birds’ presence in the wood is maintained by work, not simply by the wood’s being left untouched.

Hens, Eggs, and the First Chicks

The pheasant eggs are incubated by domestic hens. When Connie first finds two brown hens in the coops, she sees them sitting over the eggs; later, all five coops are occupied by hens, three brown, one grey, and one black. The hens respond warily when she approaches. Connie tries offering them corn from her hand, which they refuse, and then brings water in a small tin. One hen drinks, a modest response that delights her.

The birds’ care develops as a recurring routine rather than a single visit. Connie goes to the coops each day, and the hens’ continued brooding gives the clearing a dependable focus. On a sunny spring afternoon, she sees the first tiny chick moving in front of a coop while its mother calls in alarm. The chick soon returns beneath the hen’s feathers, then reappears at the edge of the shelter. The episode makes hatching visible as a sequence of cautious movement and maternal protection, not merely as an announced result. When Connie comes again one evening, the keeper is closing the coops to keep their occupants safe for the night; a small group of chicks is still outside, moving about beneath the straw shelter. He reports that there are thirty-six chicks so far. The number turns the single chick Connie first watched into one visible part of a larger season’s hatch.

Connie's Visits and the Woodland Routine

Connie’s attachment to the birds grows through repeated visits and small acts of attention. She brings water, watches the hens, and returns to see whether more chicks have appeared. The coops become the only place in her daily surroundings that consistently warms her interest. At Wragby, the conversation and social duties leave her feeling increasingly depleted; the hens and their eggs instead hold her attention through concrete, continuing activity.

That contrast shapes the timing of her visits. When duties as hostess keep her at Wragby, she feels cut off from the clearing. One evening, despite the presence of guests, she leaves after tea and crosses the park to see the chickens. On arriving, she is flushed and preoccupied with the birds, asking whether there are any more. Her attention is directed first to the young pheasants and only secondarily to the keeper. The birds have become a reason to return to the wood and a measure of change: each visit may bring a new chick or another glimpse of the flock’s development.

The routine also continues beyond the most emotionally charged spring visits. After Connie has been in the rain in the wood, she later describes the keeper coming to feed the pheasants with corn once the weather has cleared. He accompanies her back toward the broad riding when the young birds are safe under their shelter. These details place the breeding work within ordinary daily obligations, including feeding and securing the coops, rather than treating the birds only as symbols in Connie’s experience.

Woodland Refuge and Industrial Pressure

The pheasants’ protected clearing belongs to a broader contrast between woodland life and the industrial landscape around Wragby. From the denuded knoll, lights, furnaces, railway activity, and the movement of miners are visible or audible from the wood. Elsewhere, the burning Tevershall pit-bank and the polluted surroundings of Tevershall make the costs of industrial activity part of the estate’s everyday setting. The pheasant shelter therefore stands within a landscape that is cared for locally but remains exposed to forces beyond the keeper’s work.

This tension limits any simple reading of the birds as proof that nature has been restored. Their eggs hatch and the keeper tends the young, yet the surrounding wood bears the marks of wartime cutting and is crossed by the sounds and signs of industry. At the same time, the birds are not merely scenery: their nesting, hatching, feeding, and protection provide the structure of a repeated activity that Connie chooses to follow. The pheasants connect the keeper’s practical labor, the wood’s seasonal life, and Connie’s changing attention. Their importance lies in this intersection: they are creatures being raised within a precarious landscape, and their visible emergence gives the woodland scenes a particular continuity and purpose.