The call of the male キジ (kiji, Japanese Green Pheasant) is very distinctive. It brings to mind a very old, rusty trumpet intermingled with the sound of a cello bow dragged across wet steel wool.
The males flap their wings awkwardly as they deliver this call in piercing one-two volleys that, even to my human ears, are filled with yearning. And through my kitchen window, I sometimes glimpse the drably dressed hens that pick their ways through the fields of rice, onions and taro root that surround my home in Saitama Prefecture.
Between the months of March and May, I hear them constantly. The pheasants serenade me as I sit at home, and each morning I am awakened by their far-off, frenzied sound, like the crowing of a chrome chicken. Like the tanukis in their fluffed-up winter coats that creep through my backyard in winter, or the (approximately) 6 million green tree frogs that infiltrate my laundry each summer, the pheasants and their exultant calls are a sign of the seasons.