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It's Happening To My Mate... Right Now

Ok, this is insanely weird! I don't know whether it deserves a separate thread of its own...

Last evening I showed Tom, one of my repeat Airbnb guests, the video of the ghostly baby cry in the hotel room. He suggested it sounded a bit like a pheasant to him. As I've never encountered or heard a pheasant in my life, and he lives in the countryside this could be a disappointing explanation to the mystery. So when I went to bed last night I looked up videos on YouTube to find out what a pheasant 's call sounds like. Its nothing like it! I forgot to mention it to Tom this morning before he left.

Mentally rehearsing the conversation that never was I found myself quietly imitating to myself the pheasant call I'd found online as best I remembered it. Well...I've just looked out of the garden window ( where there has never been any bird bigger than a pigeon or magpie in all the decades I've lived here) and was startled to see what I assumed to be a large hawk or falcon on the lawn. Until I zoomed in and it started walking about . Is this....? It can't be!...can it?


What the hell has just happened?! Was his suggestion of a pheasant a precognitive/clairvoyant flash on his part.....or did i ...well...summon it by imagining its call? (the actual sound i was making couldn't have physically summoned it, surely, as even i deluded myself it was a good aproximation of the real thing, it was hours ago and too small a sound to conceivably penetrate brick walls and across fields!)
 
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gattino said:
Ok, this is insanely weird! I don't know whether it deserves a separate thread of its own...

Last evening I showed Tom, one of my repeat Airbnb guests, the video of the ghostly baby cry in the hotel room. He suggested it sounded a bit like a pheasant to him. As I've never encountered or heard a pheasant in my life, and he lives in the countryside this could be a disappointing explanation to the mystery. So when I went to bed last night I looked up videos on YouTube to find out what a pheasant 's call sounds like. Its nothing like it! I forgot to mention it to Tom this morning before he left.

Mentally rehearsing the conversation that never was I found myself quietly imitating to myself the pheasant call I'd found online as best I remembered it. Well...I've just looked out of the garden window ( where there has never been any bird bigger than a pigeon or magpie in all the decades I've lived here) and was startled to see what I assumed to be a large hawk or falcon on the lawn. Until I zoomed in and it started walking about . Is this....? It can't be!...can it?


What the hell has just happened?! Was his suggestion of a pheasant a precognitive/clairvoyant flash on his part.....or did i ...well...summon it by imagining its call? (the actual sound i was making couldn't have physically summoned it, surely, as even i deluded myself it was a good aproximation of the real thing, it was hours ago and too small a sound to conceivably penetrate brick walls and across fields!)
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I don't know what sound a female pheasant (like that appears to be) makes, but a male pheasant makes a very loud, sudden sound. We have one that sounds off just outside the window at work. The daft thing (a bird of small brain) regularly waltzes across the road as I drive in to the car park.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I don't know what sound a female pheasant (like that appears to be) makes, but a male pheasant makes a very loud, sudden sound. We have one that sounds off just outside the window at work. The daft thing (a bird of small brain) regularly waltzes across the road as I drive in to the car park.
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They need to be especially idiotic as they're mostly shot by the aristocracy.
 
I think I was told a stat a few years ago that more pheasants die crossing the road than are shot by toffs...in fact from my own experience I would say more pheasants are run down by Range Rovers on the school run than shot by Daddy on his day off! (Some would say I's workin' class).
 
Coal said:
They need to be especially idiotic as they're mostly shot by the aristocracy.
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Marwood said:
I think I was told a stat a few years ago that more pheasants die crossing the road than are shot by toffs...
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This old Cliche is quite past it’s best nowadays.

I have been game shooting for roughly ten years now and have never shot with a Toff or a member of the aristocracy.

Our syndicate has 20 guns and apart from a few retirees most members hold down relatively usual jobs. Construction site workers, policemen, a public an or two.

Aand like me a lot of those grew up on council estates in and around London and moved out of the smoke for a better life.
 
Tempest63 said:
This old Cliche is quite past it’s best nowadays.
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Well, it still is a bird bred and released just for the shooting pleasure of a few. I'll stick with my cliché - it's a sport that still requires a considerable income, one that is beyond the demands of the median wage and raising a family. :hoff:
maximus otter said:
Seen a game bird? Thank a shooter.
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Wouldn't miss them. Rather see a few more jays.:hoff:
 
Coal said:
…it's a sport that still requires a considerable income, one that is beyond the demands of the median wage and raising a family.
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I’ll tell the farmers on the shoot l beat for just how rich they are. They could use a laugh these days.

maximus otter
 
Coal said:
Well, it still is a bird bred and released just for the shooting pleasure of a few. I'll stick with my cliché - it's a sport that still requires a considerable income, one that is beyond the demands of the median wage and raising a family. :hoff:

:hoff:
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Until hearing from @maximus otter and @Tempest63 I would have certainly agreed with you. I suppose it depends whereabouts you are though. I grew up next to a Stately Home and your description of the types of people involved is definitely apt in my memory.
 
Floyd1 said:
Until hearing from @maximus otter and @Tempest63 I would have certainly agreed with you. I suppose it depends whereabouts you are though. I grew up next to a Stately Home and your description of the types of people involved is definitely apt in my memory.
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Ditto round here, where the Moors are let out for shooting at an eye watering price. The people you meet in Helmsley, all got up for shooting tend to be around the posh end of the spectrum, although those who go out and pot a few pheasants for dinner don;t.

I'd guess it's like hunting which, round here, isn't a perquisite of the rich. It's mostly made up of farmers and farmers' daughters and sons on cobby little beasts that get used all year round.
 
catseye said:
Ditto round here, where the Moors are let out for shooting at an eye watering price. The people you meet in Helmsley, all got up for shooting tend to be around the posh end of the spectrum, although those who go out and pot a few pheasants for dinner don;t.

I'd guess it's like hunting which, round here, isn't a perquisite of the rich. It's mostly made up of farmers and farmers' daughters and sons on cobby little beasts that get used all year round.
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Helmsley = grouse, though.

maximus otter
 
Coal said:
Well, it still is a bird bred and released just for the shooting pleasure of a few. I'll stick with my cliché - it's a sport that still requires a considerable income, one that is beyond the demands of the median wage and raising a family.
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I am a safety advisor in construction. I am probably middle of the spectrum salary wise for my role but I raised my family, all four kids, and now I can afford to spend on something I enjoy. I don’t have a car (my wife has one) or spend excessively.
But whilst I enjoy shooting we have a large circle of friends, mostly retired and none of them wealthy, who have a regular supply of pheasants during the season and when we have a glut a restaurant owned by a friend will put them on the menu for a ”special”. I don’t charge, I want to see them in the food chain. Though he does occasionally knock a bottle of wine off the bill.
 
Getting back to Gattino's video of his friend's video—I vote for cat.
Very likely I am predisposed to hear a cat, but still I vote cat.
 
The pheasant has taken up permanent residence in one corner of the garden. It just slowly struts in and out of a dark corner.

It's clearly on its own. I'm told it's young. But where the flying fudge it came from, when and why remains a total mystery.

I wonder about it in the same way I wonder about King Kong's mum and dad.
 
gattino said:
The pheasant has taken up permanent residence in one corner of the garden. It just slowly struts in and out of a dark corner.

It's clearly on its own. I'm told it's young. But where the flying fudge it came from, when and why remains a total mystery.

I wonder about it in the same way I wonder about King Kong's mum and dad.
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You clearly seduced him with your imitation of the pheasant call ! I wish I could do the same with pretty girls ...


About the social profile of hunters :

Funnily enough, in France, hunting has been a peasant's job from the 1789 revolution onwards. Before, hunting was strictly regulated by the noble landowners, and peasants could only hunt small game like rabbits and the like. So when the French revolution litteraly beheaded the nobility, it became an almost militant act for peasants to take to hunting large animals. And this endured almost until today. When I was a child, I would often go to the countryside to visit my grandfather, and althought he did not hunt, most of his local friends did. They resented heavily any attempt by the government to restrict hunting and took pride in poaching ... Now things are slowly changing, as the majority of people live in big cities and consider hunting as a cruel passtime. City humorists tend to mock French hunters as drunken peasants armed with guns ... So I guess French stereotypes are the opposite of the British ones.
 
Could it be a peacock? Looking at some reviews of past guests, the grounds have peacocks - this video sounded a bit like it.
 
brownmane said:
The sound may be a bird. I have heard peacocks before and the sound can travel quite far - a farm had them which was about a mile from my childhood home. The sound travels even better in rainy weather. The sound doesn't sound like peacocks to me, but are there other birds that may have this cry?

Forgot to ask: Where the windows open at the time of recording?
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Ruthin Castle has peacocks:

1651761293827.png


They sound like this:


I think this part of the mystery is solved.
 
James_H said:
Ruthin Castle has peacocks:

View attachment 55030

They sound like this:


I think this part of the mystery is solved.
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That's disappointing but convincing. Every previous example of a peacocks call I'd found on YouTube sounded much more like a chattering chimp and was therefore ruled out ( by me)..but the example youve given certainly fits the bill. Or beak as the case may be.
 
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