Driving back from Crieff today I passed a rumpled bunch of feathers on the road, with a startled little head sticking up. It was a female pheasant who had obviously been hit by a car so I stopped, picked her up, put her in the passenger seat and took her home. I think she must have had a broken wing but I'm not enough of a veterinary surgeon to know what to do about that, and I was unwilling to inflict the pain of resetting a bone on a fragile bird. However our garden is heaving with pheasants so hoping for the best I planted her under the bird feeders. Eventually she limped off down towards the river but I did a quick sketch of her before she left. Seen from a distance female pheasants are a dull brown colour so I was surprised to see the iridescent blue and green eyes at the tips of the feathers on her back. Those would translate well into embroidery – you could use touches of metallic thread for the iridescent eyes. I've been trying to stylise the sketch, and make an embroidery design out of what was originally a bird portrait
Half realistic, half-stylised sketch of the pheasant. I still have to add the tail