Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant sits: On the symbolism of color. Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant sits Hunter wants to know where the pheasant sits
Every hunter wants to know where a pheasant is sitting
Color perception flows smoothly from the right hemisphere to the left
"Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting" - why do we perceive the rainbow in this way, in seven bands of the spectrum, and not otherwise? Where does this riot of colors come from, and does everyone perceive the color palette the same way? These simple, in general, questions are not so easy to find clear answers. It seems that nature has endowed us with a complex and very flexible visual apparatus, allowing some to see this way and others - differently.
Color is a largely subjective characteristic. Of course, this phenomenon is based on a completely objective optical law of reflection of a certain part of the visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation by any object. For example, an orange reflects orange, which is why it actually has that color.
However, the perception of color has another side - physiological and psychological. Individual perception of color is determined not only by its spectral composition, but also by the features of the structure of the human eye and psyche. Here it will be appropriate to recall color blindness - one of the types of color blindness.
So how do we perceive a rainbow? Are the seven "classic" colors an ephemeral product of higher nervous activity, or is the corresponding recognition program "stitched" in the visual system of any member of the species? Homo sapiens default and can't be subjective?
To answer this question, the easiest way is to do a small reduction in coloristics and try to understand how this works for the example of individual colors.
Having become a hunter and having hunted for about forty years, I repeatedly went on a pheasant hunt. All these were hunts with a "gravity" or a paddock, not particularly prey and interesting. But six years ago, my elder friend, knowing that I had long wanted to get a dog for hunting a duck, gave me a New Year's Eve a Drathhaar puppy named Graf. In the first year of hunting with the Count, I decided to go for a pheasant. And now there was no limit to the delight of the hunt. It was a great, beautiful hunt! Since then, for six years now, I have become an avid pheasant. During my first season with the dog, I caught more pheasants than in all the previous forty years, since there were enough licenses.
It is difficult to find any other hunting bird in our country that would be as bright and beautifully colored as a pheasant. The roosters' outfit is especially beautiful: they have golden, dark green, orange and purple colors in their plumage. On the glossy dark head of the rooster, there is a tuft and rather large red fields around the eyes. There is a ring of white feather on the neck. On the top of the back and neck there are greenish feathers with a blue tint against a general golden background. The back is golden-red, and each feather is decorated with a black triangular spot. The long tail is in tune with the back, and at its base there are copper-red feathers with purple and purple tints, decorated with an intricate pattern. Chickens, as a rule, are colored brownish-yellow with streaks.
The permanent habitat of pheasants is impassable thorn bushes, dense thickets of forest belts, high dense grass, weeds, especially clogged with tumbleweeds, thick reeds, vineyards, fields sown with cereals. And these birds are very fond of summer cottages. The main food for pheasants is insects, berries, weed and cereal seeds. However, pheasants are not very picky about food. In summer, they prefer locusts, beetles, caterpillars, snails, and can peck at both a lizard and a mouse. In autumn, seeds and berries take the main place in their diet. Once, in a very harsh snowy winter, I saw pheasants hunting starlings. But the main thing for this bird is that there is always water nearby.
The pheasant flies very badly - at most it can fly 300-400 meters, so it always tries to hide or flee (and pheasants run just fine). This explains the pheasant's craving for "strong" places, inconvenient for walking and shooting. However, a pheasant can also go out to feed into the practically bare steppe, but it is quite difficult to catch him by surprise there - at the first signs of danger, he swiftly runs away into the saving thickets. So hunting this bird without a dog is quite difficult and cannot be as successful as hunting other game. For a good pheasant hunt, you just need a dog with a very fast search (otherwise the pheasants will run away into the thicket without firing a shot), hardy and not very sensitive to thorny vegetation. Almost all breeds of cops are suitable for this, but preference should be given to wire-haired and long-haired dogs, which are more reliably protected from thorns. Drathhaars are good in this respect.
Under a skillful dog, pheasants sink and hide, allowing the cop to make a stance on them, and the hunter to come up and get ready to fire. The pheasant takes off noisily and quickly, as if it is shooting itself out of the bushes. This is understandable - after all, he is in such a thicket where it is impossible to really flap his wings, and his jumps sometimes reach one and a half meters in height. For all its bright color, the pheasant hides very skillfully. Approaching a dog standing on a rack, it is very difficult to see him even in the low and thin grass. When hunting pheasants, a dog is needed not only in order to raise the bird on its wing, but also in order to find and give a killed pheasant to the hunter or to catch a wounded animal. The fact is that a broken pheasant often falls into such thickets that it is simply impossible to find it yourself.
As for the wounded animals, especially those with intact legs, it is generally unrealistic to catch such animals without a dog. The wounded pheasants, barely touching the ground, turn to flight with tremendous speed and instantly disappear into the thickets. A wounded pheasant also has the ability to hide and not emit a smell. Sometimes hunters complain that they seem to have knocked down a pheasant, but the dog cannot find it. You just need to wait 10-15 minutes and again let the dog search for the wounded animal - just after this time, the pheasant will "smell" again. For some reason, it is believed that the pheasant is quite tough on the wound, and that is why it gives a large number of wounded animals. But from my point of view, this is not the case. This is the opinion of hunters who shoot a pheasant with a large fraction - the 5th or even the 3rd. And those who hunt without a dog - because the pheasant flies out unexpectedly from them, and they shoot in a hurry. To avoid wounds, I shoot the pheasant with small shot (usually number 7 or 8). Yes, and I shoot from under the counter of my Count. After 6 years of joint hunting, I know for sure by his behavior and posture, "on whom he stands" - whether it is a quail, or a pheasant or a partridge, and in which direction the bird.
The golden bird, the firebird, the royal game - as soon as the pheasant is not called, and now hardly anyone will refuse the opportunity to hunt him. Although the pheasant in our country, on the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea, appeared relatively recently, in the mid-70s of the last century. Then, on the initiative and under the guidance of my father, an experienced hunter Pyotr Ilyich Grishchenko, the Kerch city organization of hunters, then still UOOR, purchased pheasants for breeding in hunting grounds in the Kholodnaya Gora tract near Belogorsk. This unique pheasant nursery was created at the request of N.S. Khrushchev back in 1956. Those pheasants were released, having previously created comfortable conditions for the bird, on the Kerch land in the Maryevsky forest. From there, the pheasant gradually settled throughout the Kerch Peninsula, but the Maryevsky forest for a long time remained the main hunting ground for this beautiful bird. Some time ago, the Maryevsky forest was taken away from the Kerch hunters, and with it the pheasant hunt. It was then, four years ago, that the chairman of our society of hunters, Vladimir Puzikov, resumed raising and releasing pheasants in our hunting grounds.
Every year in our hunting farm, up to 3 thousand pheasant eggs are laid in incubators. Not every egg gives birth to a chick; many die in the process of feeding. By virtue of its natural character, a lot of pheasant dies in the aviary as well - it just beats against the nets and crossbars. Much disappears in the first days after release, as the aviary bird is poorly trained to look for food and water on its own. Predators also do their bit. In total, out of 3 thousand “potential pheasants”, about one and a half live up to the beginning of the hunting season. Young pheasants are released in forest belts or reeds, where there is food and water. But even there, the forces of the hunting community are equipped with artificial feeders and drinking bowls. The release of grown poultry is carried out twice a year. The first time - at the beginning of summer and the second time - two weeks before the start of the pheasant hunt. Quite a significant part of the birds survive the hunting season and the capricious Kerch winter, and in the spring they form pairs and bear offspring. Thus, there is a stable population on the peninsula, no different from a completely wild pheasant. Nevertheless, in the winter period, the pheasant must be fed. All the forest belts of our hunting grounds are equipped with feeders, which are constantly replenished with grain waste. Part of the grain is purchased, something is donated through sponsorship.
Growing a pheasant is a rather costly item for the budget of our hunting community. But the costs are paid off by hunting. Some uninformed people say that for the money spent on hunting, you can buy any meat of your choice. Note that I personally do not go hunting for meat. I go hunting for a shot and emotions, and, of course, in the end - for a beautiful trophy. And the very opening of the pheasant hunt in our lands is a holiday, people come to us in Kerch to hunt for this bird from all over the Crimea and not only. It is so much emotions, meetings and communication! Only for the sake of them you can breed this beautiful bird.
It is definitely worth mentioning that hunting for a semi-wild bird released into the field at the beginning of the season is practically no different from hunting a wild pheasant. In the wild, pheasant juveniles quickly adapt, run wild and become rather cautious. Although right after the enclosure, young pheasants practically do not know how to fly and prefer to simply hide from the hunter. When hunting with a dog, these are at first easy prey. But, according to my observations, after a couple of weeks the pheasant becomes a full-fledged wild bird and is no different from one born in nature.
The younger the pheasants, the better they can withstand the dog's stance, the less space they run and the faster they rise. Old males almost always flee, raising their tail vertically, and take off only when they are practically overtaken by a dog or when at least a small stream, gully or other obstacle appears in their path. The pheasant rises from the ground almost always vertically, with a strong flapping of its wings: the males - with a cry “Whoa! oh-gok! ”, and females - with a weak clucking. In our hunting farm, hunting is not practiced, when a pheasant is released per day or on the day of hunting - this is considered unsportsmanlike (it practically turns out that this is still a poultry). In general, I like to shoot a pheasant at the end of the season, when it sheds well and has a beautiful long tail. I love it when a rooster leads a dog - you watch and admire this fight between a cop and a bird. It is no coincidence that many, along with the woodcock, consider the pheasant, especially in strong lands, one of the most beautiful objects for hunting with a cop.
And in conclusion, one of the cases on the hunt. My friend and I walked along the forest belt, I on the one hand, he on the other, and Graf worked in the forest belt itself. And, naturally, he did not see what was happening ahead. And there, in a gap in the forest belt, a hundred or one hundred and fifty meters away, a flock of partridges was sitting. Seeing us from afar, the birds rose and flew away. When after a while we came to this place, my drathaar clearly stood on the counter. I began to explain to him with laughter and irony that these were partridges, they flew away, but the smell remained. He did not respond to my call. Then I kicked the grass in the place where he was looking to show that it was empty. And, oh horror! From this small patch of grass two healthy roosters flew out. So much for the pheasant hunt!
Russian hunting magazine, July 2015
1983“Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting” is a mnemonic phrase every child knows to memorize the sequence of the colors of the rainbow. And also any hunter, driven exclusively by hunting passion, wants to know where this bird is hiding.
But to notice a pheasant, you do not need to have a rare flair. Sometimes in winter you don't even have to look for it for a long time, it literally flies out from under your feet and, with a sharp cry and a loud flapping of its wings, will heavily fly up the nearest tree. And after a short respite, it will fall off the branch, but not upward, like other birds, but downward and, having barely overcome several tens of meters, again plucks into a snowdrift under some bush.
Of all the wintering birds that are allowed to hunt in our country, it is perhaps difficult to find a more attractive representative of the feathered world: the cockerel is unimaginably good in its fashionable clothes, bright feathers of golden, purple, greenish, copper and white colors, a long elegant tail, a charming crest - why not a peacock? By the law of nature, the female pheasant is a completely nondescript person, easily disguised in the grass.
The Manchurian pheasant, we are talking about it, is a subspecies of the common pheasant, lives in the Primorsky Territory and in the Amur River basin, inhabiting mainly open landscapes - meadows, fields, clearings and woodlands. The pheasant is a nomadic bird, however, for the winter it does not leave its homes, but only actively moves in search of food.
Since the pheasant spends all its life on land, it also gets its food from the ground (like a chicken, it digs out food with its paw). Snow cover over 10 cm makes this process much more difficult. The pheasant chooses to live in places where dense vegetation grows and there are water resources. For example, forests and places with thorny bushes along river valleys, reed supports around lakes, alternating with open landscapes, are ideal for him. It is this environment that provides protection for the bird and allows it to hide from predators.
Among all representatives of the chickens family, the pheasant holds the record for running speed. The posture that he takes when running is also interesting: he stretches his neck and head forward, while raising his tail. So the instinctively laid mechanism helps to significantly improve the aerodynamics of running.
The pheasant's diet consists of plant foods: seeds, berries, shoots, fruits. More than a hundred species of plants are used for food. Pheasants also do not refuse animal food: worms, snails, insects, spiders, small snakes and rodents. One of the favorite dishes of pheasants is Colorado beetles. Often these birds are bred to deter pests in potato fields. By the way, it was during the hunt for the Colorado potato beetle that pheasants were seen in the potato fields of private farmsteads in Roshchino. Everything would be fine, but the birds not only peck the beetles from the leaves, but also actively tear the ground, exposing the roots of the plant. Therefore, it is not clear whether there is more benefit or harm from such help.
Under natural conditions, in the first year of life, almost 80% of individuals die, so broods of pheasants are found even in autumn. If the first clutch dies in the paws of a predator and the female has no choice but to try to postpone - a second one.
The life span of a pheasant in the wild reaches 7 years, in captivity - up to 15 years.
This bird is easy to tame, so breeding domestic pheasants has become a common thing. There was even a separate industry - pheasant breeding. Once, even in Spassk-Dalny, a similar farm was created. Such farms are successfully operating in the western part of the country. Domestic pheasants bring considerable profit to the owners.
The pheasant population is rapidly recovering, despite their active use in hunting. Among natural causes, climatic conditions and predators influence the abundance. In the first case, the decline in numbers occurs after snowy, cold winters. If the snow level becomes more than 20 centimeters and lasts for a long time. In general, the number of pheasants reaches 300 million. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the pheasant as a "Least Concern" species.
There is an opinion that it was the pheasant who became the prototype of the fabulous Firebird. There are many legends associated with these birds. For example, according to legend, it was thanks to the birds that the city of Tbilisi was founded; a stylized image of a pheasant and a hawk can be seen on the coat of arms of the Georgian capital.
The golden pheasant was in China a hallmark of dignity for high-ranking officials, and therefore the image of a pheasant means a wish for a successful career and withstanding trials. And the pair of pheasants depicted on the scroll symbolizes marital happiness.
In our area, attentive drivers have repeatedly met these birds, because in search of food pheasants often go out on the road between Roshchino and Novopokrovka. And for a photographer to take a picture of a pheasant in the wild is good luck, the bird in the frame is too bright. We have repeatedly noticed a pheasant in the courtyards of Boguslavets, Vostretsovo and Roshchino - some brave individuals even manage to walk between garden plantings, occasionally shrieking shrilly. It turns out that these seem to be familiar, but, meanwhile, beautiful birds live next door to us - the amazing thing is very close, you just have to take a closer look.
Press service
NP "Udege legend"
Photo by Irina MERZLYAKOVA
About the fatal hunt of the great traveler Nikolai Mikhailovich Przhevalsky, which served as the prologue to his untimely and sudden death. And today I would like to dwell in more detail on the "culprit" of the death of the indefatigable explorer of Central Asia. So - a pheasant.
The pheasant is a bird well known to all residents of the south of Kazakhstan. Even those who have never met her in wildlife must have heard guttural screams, similar to the sounds emitted by a frightened child right away from a flute or bassoon. Having whistled hoarsely a couple of notes, the performer immediately fell silent, as if afraid of his own courage. And he tries to quickly change the disposition, hastily running away from his own cry. And he runs masterfully - it's not for nothing that he is considered the unsurpassed champion of his family in terms of speed.
Perhaps it is precisely this caution that allows the bird to settle in such unforgivable proximity to its main enemy. In the city limits of Almaty, for example. Moreover, not only residents of urban suburbs and cottage villages on mountain counters, but also visitors to the Botanical Garden, and patients of large city sanatoriums that have preserved their territories since Soviet times, can easily hear the "singing" of a pheasant.
But in any case, the pheasant always remembers its safety. And he will always find for himself such a jungle where the hand of a park designer has not reached. And it will pass where the densest bushes have grown, where the trees have formed the most impassable thickets. Impenetrable - for humans.
But the appearance of pheasants at the doorstep of their worst enemy is not the order of things, but rather a harsh necessity, a behavioral risk due to the reduction of natural pheasant lands under the onslaught of urban trends. And also - a consequence of the extraordinary adaptive plasticity of this relative of our domestic chickens.
The most ideal conditions for pheasants to live in the wildlife of Kazakhstan are tugai forests in the floodplains of rivers: along the Syrdarya, Chu, Ili and many small rivers of the Semirechye: from the Aral to Alakol, in the reeds of the Northern Caspian region. These beautiful birds have prospered here for many millennia.
A meeting with a pheasant in tugai is always unexpected for a complacent nature lover. Because the "best runner among chickens", taken by surprise, suddenly remembers his ability to fly as well. And he flies out from under his feet, making at the same time the terrible noise of an inept flyer, amplified by panic screams.
"It takes off only in case of sudden danger and strong fright, and from the high thickets it takes off with a so-called candle - almost vertically, and then it switches to normal horizontal flight, with alternating short flapping wings and gliding," writes the patriarch of Kazakhstani ornithology Anatoly Fedorovich Kovshar.
Rockets from the legendary S-400 complex take off in almost the same way. But that's where the similarities end. The missiles are carried away into the distance to solve their defensive goals, and the pheasant ... The pheasant becomes an easy target for a not very sophisticated hunter. It is not without reason that the large stand-up shooters' competitions that took place in Soviet times were called "The Golden Pheasant".
It is no coincidence that the pheasants of the southern territories of modern Kazakhstan lived and did not grieve until the hunters acquired firearms. In the second half of the 19th century, the Syr Darya was still considered a full-flowing river, and the dense tugai forests and endless reed jungles along its banks were a true paradise for all living creatures, including countless wild boars, numerous more tigers and completely innumerable (as it seemed to many) pheasants. This continued until the hunters, armed in a new way, began a methodical and mass extermination of the natural inhabitants of Syrdarya.
Professionals and amateurs alike took on the pheasants with special passion. The fact is that pheasant meat was considered a valuable delicacy in fashionable restaurants in Moscow, St. Petersburg and European capitals. Therefore, the supply of pheasant meat has become a lucrative business for the fishermen and buyers of the Perovsky district. According to some reports, in good seasons from the banks of the Syr Darya, up to 30 thousand carcasses of a noble bird came to the tables of the capital's gourmets.
It is clear that nature reacted to such an uncontrolled and reckless beating as usual - pheasants began to come across less and less in the coastal forests of the Syr Darya. "Pheasant hunting provided significant income for local hunters, but the ruthless encouragement of the Moscow prasols to destroy this useful bird first caused restrictive and then prohibitive measures for its export." So the source of those years summed up the history of fishing.
But while the pheasant was an ordinary representative of the fauna, he was pounded mercilessly. And those 16 birds that Przhevalsky shot on the fatal day for himself on the banks of the Chu - prey, perhaps unthinkable for modern hunters, but at that time not so impressive. Here is a quote from a hunting story by a contemporary of Przhevalsky, who shot pheasants in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya, near the Raim fortification: “Hunting was a real pleasure for us. ...
The success that pheasant meat had with fashionable restaurateurs and metropolitan gourmets is understandable. By and large, a pheasant is a chicken, they belong to the same order. However, the pheasant, although a chicken, but with a claim to more.
The only representative of the pheasant family (from the order of chickens) in Kazakhstan is the common pheasant, kyrgauyl. Phasianus colchicus. Despite the gambling hunt, our hunters have not yet managed to bring our own pheasant to the Red Book. And it played an important role in this - no, not public concern and not the protection of the state! - the hypertrophied caution of this bird.
Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting. But not every pheasant wants to show the hunter the place where he sits.
Gagari Khrumochkin in childhood was taught to divide people exclusively into two categories: red and white. Repeatedly he wanted to thank the Supreme Institution for such a wonderful fact of belonging to the scarlet group. But the very act of thanksgiving to the Higher Instance was considered a manifestation of white cowardice, and therefore it was always necessary to thank the red-brown party, which had no special relation to the choice of his place of birth ...
It was a banal and therefore gray time. Morals gradually changed, and one day the world turned upside down, or, from head to feet, as you like. The red color was pretty dirty, but the white one had time to be filled with very noble shades. Gagari Khrumochkin was one of the first to pick up new trends and began to etch all shades of scarlet from human heads. In the minds of Khrumochkin, in conjunction with the new order, curses were now walking about on the fact of such an unfortunate place and time of birth. However, this time the act of sending curses against the same Higher Instance was perceived as blasphemy and was persecuted, if not according to the law, then according to the spirit ...
In a few more years, the devil himself would no longer be able to discern the advantages of one color over others. Because in addition to the classic red and white colors, new and promising colors began to appear on the arena: pink, blue, black ...
If earlier it was easy for Gagari to decide on the choice of color, now the work of his whole life has reached a dead end. The worst thing happened, he fell into doubts. Maybe the most important and most correct color is not at all. But then, it turns out, the struggle of colors is meaningless, and, as you know, life without a struggle is not life ...
As a result, Khrumochkin was grabbed by the great and green depression. His health began to deteriorate, and vision problems arose. Gagari went to see an ophthalmologist and received an uncomplicated diagnosis: complete and final color blindness of the first degree. Irreparable and incurable properties.
Gagariy Khrumochkin was about to get upset and commit suicide, but, unexpectedly for himself, changed his mind. And he was transformed. And created a great party of all oppressed, destitute and discolored. With a gray flag and a modest slogan: "Color blind people of all countries, unite !!!"
And Gagari Khrumochkin became a national hero. And then - international. And after his death, party comrades erected Gagaria all over the world one hundred forty-three thousand seventeen monuments. And half a million plaques to boot. And to this day, the cause of the glorious Khrumochkin is growing and expanding. Eternal memory to the hero ...
AFTERWORD (not to be confused with aftertaste)
Whatever the child is amused with,
If only ... not hung up.
Reviews
:))))) Zhen, it's funny! Only a little bit evil.
But, very witty and cute! :)
If I may put it this way: very your way!
(Typical for you :)
However, this is my - purely subjective opinion ...
Nice name! It encodes the physically irrefutable fact that a white ray of light transmitted through a prism reveals a spectrum of 7 primary colors.
Colors:
red (each),
orange (hunter),
yellow (desires),
green (know)
blue (where),
blue (sitting),
purple (pheasant).
This very fair comment of yours proves once again that pure white in nature is just an illusion! :)))
Wishing you further creative success,
Vila.
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