Open season for pheasant

Today is the first day of the pheasant season. In anticipation of joys to come, I'm reading Norman Tebbit's The Game Cook. There's lots of basic information for people who've never cooked game, but also some new ideas for ways to cook pheasant. It'll be a week or so before there are any pheasant fit to eat, and then I'll be forced to choose: Highland pheasant (with haggis and a slug of whisky), pheasant with beetroot, potato and parsnip (quite a few of my personal favourites in one dish), with red cabbage, with apples and cream? But we'll probably start the season with pheasant and pigs' trotters ... an inspired idea for overcoming the dry leanness of pheasant.

In the mean time, the pheasants that live round here seem to know life's a little trickier today than it was yesterday: it's the first day for months that I haven't seen a single pheasant. I won't see many in the garden or on the roads round here until February. It happens every year, and I always find myself wondering if they have some sort of Jungian collective memory ...