What’s in a list

Deep within the Forests of Canary Pine that reached high up the slopes of the dormant volcano Mount Teide I found something I didn’t expect.

Last month we paid a visit to Tenerife and had travelled high up into the mountains. The road was not much more than cobbled and the rental car was groaning at it pulled us up above the cloud line and into sunshine. The day was suddenly full of blue sky. We were searching for the birds of the high slopes, within the very last of the trees before the open lava fields. We were miles from anywhere… and I found … a chicken! Yep, a chicken; not a residence or farm in sight but here was what was obviously an escapee that had become feral and was living in the forest. This got me thinking.

I know of several areas in Norfolk and neighbouring Suffolk where chickens run wild as they do in Asia. They live and breed as wild birds. They have constructed themselves into self-sustaining populations. Should they therefore be on the British list? Pheasants are. What’s the difference? What a conundrum.

A Chicken scratting a living under the Canary Pines on Tenerife – A wild bird?