THE PEINCE OF WALES' S PHEASANT (Phasianus principalis). PHEASANTS THEIE ilatural Itstorg an& practical Management BY W. B. TEGETMEIER (Member of the British Ornithologists' Union), AUTHOR OF "THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CRANES," "TABLE AND MARKET POULTRY," ETC., ETC. THIRD EDITION, ENLARGED. ILLUSTRATED FEOM LIFE BY MESSES. J. G. MILLAIS, T. W. WOOD, P. SMIT, AND F. W. FEOHAWK, ETC. LONDON : HORACE COX, ; THE FIELD" OFFICE, BEEAM'S BUILDINGS, E.G. 1897. (All rights reserved.) LONDON : PRINTED BY HORACE COX, " THE FIELD" OFFICE, BREAM'S BUILDINGS, B.C. PREFACE. DETAILED ACCOUNT of the natural history, habits, food, and treatment of the various species of Pheasants had long been a desideratum; this book was projected with a view to supply the want in a more complete and comprehensive form than had hitherto been attempted. The extremely favour- able reception which the previous editions met with, not only from the reviewers, but also from the general public, showed that the demand for such information was not over-estimated, whilst the opinions expressed by many of our highest authorities have led me to believe that the endeavour to combine ornithological research with practical experience in the management of this group of birds was not unattended with success. In the following work I have given the natural history and general practical management, not only of the pheasants strictly adapted for the covert, but also of the allied species, which are the best adapted to our aviaries. The progress of scientific exploration is continually bringing to light species of pheasants hitherto unknown ; M696928 iv PREFACE. some of these are well suited to our coverts, whilst others are regarded as ornamental birds. A few years since the only pheasant bred wild in England was the common species (Phasianus colcMcus) ; our coverts now possess the Chinese (P. torquatus) and the Japanese (P. versicolor) species ; whilst the Keeves's pheasant (P. reevesii), still more beautiful, and equally well adapted both for sporting and culinary pur- poses, has been recently introduced. In the same manner, our aviaries have recently been enriched by the addition of the Amherst pheasant (Thaumalea amherstise) and others, which, by their exquisite beauty, eclipse even the gorgeous coloration and elegant markings of the comparatively well- known Gold and Silver pheasants. To indicate and illustrate these various species, to give as far as is known their natural history, to describe the best methods of rearing them in preserves and inclosed pheasantries, to enter into the numerous details respecting their food, management, protection, rearing, diseases, &c., is the object at which I have aimed in the preparation of this work. In the following chapters I first treat of the natural history of the pheasants generally their food, habits, nesting, &c. Then follows the consideration of their management in preserves, the details of the different methods of feeding the birds, their protection from their numerous enemies, the formation of coverts, &c. This is succeeded by an account of their treatment in inclosed pheasantries, the hatching of the eggs, rearing and feeding the young birds, and the prevention and cure of their diseases. PREFACE. A detailed description of all the different species adapted for turning out, and of the various hybrids and crosses between them, is then given; and the work concludes with accounts of the ornamental species, such as the Gold, Silver, and Amherst pheasants, and the best methods of their management in aviaries. Of the admirable engravings which illustrate the volume I may remark, in the words of Izaak Walton, ' f Next let me add this, that he that likes not the book should like the excellent pictures . . . . which I may take a liberty to commend, because they concern not myself." W. B. TEGETMEIER. NORTH FINCHLEY, N. CONTENTS. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANTS, CHAPTER I. Habits, Food, Structure, &c. ... ... ... page 1 CHAPTER II. Introduction, Distribution, &c. ... ... 21 MANAGEMENT IN PRESERVES. CHAPTER III. Formation of Coverts ... ... ... ... ... 41 CHAPTER IV. Feeding in Coverts ... ... ... ... ... ... 51 CHAPTER V. Rearing and Protection ... ... ... ... ... 58 MANAGEMENT IN CONFINEMENT, CHAPTER VI. Formation of Pens and Aviaries 77 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. Laying and Hatching ... ... ... ... page 95 CHAPTER VIII. Eearing the Young Birds ... ... ... ... ... 109 DISEASES OF PHEASANTS. CHAPTER IX. The Gapes, Cramp, &c. ... '.,.' 125 PHEASANTS ADAPTED TO THE COVERT. CHAPTER X. The Common Pheasant ... ... ... ... ... 143 CHAPTER XI. The Prince of Wales's Pheasant ... ... 152 CHAPTER XII. The Chinese Pheasant ;;; ... 155 CHAPTER XIII. The Japanese Pheasant ..-.- ... ... ... ... 161 CHAPTER XIV. Soenimer ring's Pheasant "... ... "... ' ... ... 169 CHAPTER XV. Reeves's Pheasant . 177 PHEASANTS ADAPTED TO THE AVIARY. CHAPTER XVI. The Golden Pheasant . 188 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER XVII. The Amherst Pheasant ... ... ... ... page 199 CHAPTER XVIII. The Silver Pheasant 206 CHAPTER XIX. The Eared Pheasant ... '..' ... 212 CHAPTER XX. The Impeyan Pheasant ... ... ... ... ... 215 CHAPTER XXI. The Argus Pheasant 220 APPENDIX. TRANSPORT OP PHEASANTS 227 LIST OF PLATES. Prince of Wales' s Pheasant (P. principalis) Frontispiece Common Pheasant (P. colchicus) To face 143 Bohemian Pheasant (P. colchicus variety)") Hybrid Pheasant (Reeves's and Bohemian) ^ Chinese Pheasant (P. torquaius) } , 155 Japanese Pheasant (P. versicolor) 161 Scemmer ring's Pheasant (P. scemmerringii) ' 169 Reeves' s Pheasant (P. reevesii) ,, 177 Reeves' s Pheasant in Flight 185 Reeves's Pheasant (P. reevesii) 183 Golden Pheasant (Thaumalea picta) 189 Amherst Pheasant (Thaumalea amherstioi) ,, 199 Silver Pheasant (Euplocqmus nycthemerus) 207 Eared Pheasant (Crossoptilon mantchuricum) Impeyaii Pheasant (Lopliophorus impeyanus) ... Argus Pheasant (Argun- giganteus] Argus Pheasant Displaying its plumage 22i> PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. CHAPTEE I. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANTS. HABITS, FOOD, STRUCTURE, ETC. HE PHEASANTS, properly so called (as dis- tinguished from the allied but perfectly distinct groups which include the Gold and Silver pheasants, the Kaleege, the Monaul, &c.) constitute the genus or group known to naturalists under the title Phasianus. Of the true pheasants no less than thirteen distinct species have been described by Mr. D. Gr. Elliott, in his magnificent monograph on the Phasianidas. Of these several are known only by rare specimens of their skins brought from scarcely explored Asiatic countries, and others cannot be regarded as anything more than mere local or geographical varieties of well known species. Since the publication of Elliott's Phasianidse several additional species have been described. Without including, however, such birds as have, from their rarity or other causes, no practical interest to English game preservers, there remain several well known species that will require our careful consideration. Such are : The common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), now generally diffused B 2 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. throughout southern and central Europe ; the Chinese (P. torquatus) ; the Japanese (P. versicolor) ; the Eeeves (P. reevesii) ; and the Soemmerring (P. soemmerringii). These, however, are so closely related in their structure, form, and habits, that their natural history and general management may be given once for all, and their distinctive peculiarities pointed out subsequently. The pheasants constituting the genus Phasianus. are readily distinguished by their extremely elongated tail feathers, which attain their maximum development in the Reeves pheasant, reaching in that species to a length exceeding five or six feet. They are all destitute of feathered crests or fleshy combs, but are furnished with small tufts of feathers behind the eyes. In their native state they are essentially forest birds, frequenting the margins of woods, coming into the open tracts in search of food, and retreating into the thick underwood at the slightest cause for alarm. The common pheasant, which has been introduced from its native country, Asia Minor, for upwards of a thousand years, though spread over the greater part of Europe, and more recently introduced into America, Australia, and New Zealand, still retains its primitive habits. " It is," says Naumann, in his work on the " Birds of Germany," " certainly a forest bird, but not in the truest sense of the term; for neither does it inhabit the densely wooded districts, nor the depths of the mixed forest, unless driven to do so. Small pieces of grove, where deep under- bush and high grass grow between the trees, where thorn hedges, berry-growing bushes, and water overgrown with reeds, and here and there pastures and fields are found, are its chosen places of abode. Nor must well-cultivated and grain-growing fields be wanting where this bird is to do well. It neither likes the bleak mountain country nor dry sandy places; nor does it frequent the pine woods unless for protection against its enemies, or during bad weather, or at night." FOOD OF THE PHEASANT. "In. our own country/' says Macgillivray, "its favourite places of resort are thick plantations, or tangled woods by streams, where, among the long grass, brambles, and other shrubs, it passes the night, sleeping on the ground in summer and autumn, but commonly roosting in the trees in the winter." Like the domestic fowl, which it closely resembles in its internal structure and its habits, the pheasant is an omnivorous feeder ; grain, herbage, roots, berries, and other small fruits, insects, acorns, beech mast, are alike acceptable to it. Naumann gives the following detailed description of its dietary on the Continent. "Its food consists of grain, seeds, fruits, and berries, with green herbs, insects, and worms, varying with the time of year. Ants, and particularly their larvae, are a favourite food, the latter forming the chief support of the young. It also eats many green weeds, the tender shoots of grass, cabbage, young clover, wild cress, pimpernel, young peas, &c., &c. Of berries : the wild mezereum (Daphne mezereum), wild strawberries (Fragaria), currants, elderberries from the species Sambucus racemosa, S. nigra, and S. ebulus ; blackberries (Rubus cdesius, B. idseus, and R. fruiticosus) ; mistletoe (Viscum album) ; hawthorn (Oratsbgus torminalis). Plums, apples, and pears it eats readily, and cherries, mulberries, and grapes it also takes when it can get them. In the autumn, ripe seeds are its chief food, it eats those of many of the sedges and grasses, and of several species of Polygonum, as P. dumetorum black bindweed (P. convolvulus) ; knot grass (P. aviculare) ; and also those of the cow- wheat (Melampyrum) ; and acorns, beech mast, &c., form a large portion of its food in the latter months of the year. Amongst forest plants, it likes the seeds of the hemp-nettle (Galeopsis), and it also feeds on almost all the seeds that the farmer sows." To this long catalogue of its continental fare may be added the roots of the common silver weed (Potentilla anserina), and those of the pig-nut or earth-nut (Bunium B 2 4 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. fiexuosum, and the tubers of the common buttercups (Ranunculus bulbosus and R. ficaria) , which are often scratched out of the soil and eaten. Macgillivray states that " One of the most remarkable facts relative to this bird that has come under my observation, was the presence of a very large quantity of the fronds of the common polypody (Polypodium vulgare) in the crop of one which I opened in the winter of 1835. I am not aware that any species of fern has ever been found constituting part of the food of a ruminating quadruped or gallinaceous bird ; and if it should be found by experiment that the pheasant thrives on such substances, advantage might be taken of the circumstance." Thompson, in his ' ' Natural History of Ireland," recounts the different varieties of food he observed in opening the crops of ten pheasants from November to April inclusive. In seven he discovered the fruit of the hawthorn, with grain, small seeds, and peas. In one no less than thirty-seven acorns. Another had its crop nearly filled with grass ; only one contained any insects, the period of examination being the colder months of the year; in summer the pheasant is decidedly insectivorous; all contained numerous fragments of stone. He also records that in the spring the yellow flowers of the pilewort (Ranunculus ficaria) are always eaten in large quantity, as are the tuberous roots of the common silver weed (Potentilla anserina], when they are turned up by cultivation. Mr. Thompson adds: "While spending the month of January, 1849, at the sporting quarters of Ardimersy Cottage, Island of Islay, where pheasants are abundant, and attain a very large size the ring-necked variety, too, being common I observed that these birds, in the outer or wilder coverts, feed, during mild as well as severe weather, almost wholly on hazel nuts. In the first bird that was remarked to contain them, they were reckoned, and found to be twenty-four in number, all of full size and perfect ; in addition were many large insect larvae. Either oats or Indian corn being thrown out every morning before FOOD OF THE PHEASANT. the windows of the cottage for pheasants, I had an oppor- tunity of observing their great preference of the former to the latter. I remarked a pheasant one day in Islay taking the sparrow's place, by picking at horsedung on the road for undigested oats." Among the more singular articles of food that form part of the pheasant's very varied dietary may be mentioned the spangles of the oak so common in the autumn on the under side of the leaves. These are galls caused by the presence of the eggs of a species of gall-fly (Neuropterus) which may be reared from the spangles if they are collected in the autumn, and kept in a cool and rather moist atmos- phere during the winter. About the fall of the leaf these spangles begin to lose their flat mushroom-like form and red hirsute appearance, and become by degrees raised or bossed towards the middle, in consequence of the growth of the enclosed grub, which now becomes visible when the spangle is cut open. The perfect insect makes its appearance in April and May. Some few years since Mr. R. Carr Ellison published the following account of their being eagerly sought after and devoured by pheasants in a wild state : {C Just before the fall of the oak-leaf these spangles (or the greater part of them) become detached from it, and are scattered upon the ground under the trees in great profusion. Our pheasants delight in picking them up, especially from the surface of walks and roads, where they are most easily found. But, as they are quite visible even to human eyes, among the wet but undecayed leaves beneath the oaks, wherever pheasants have been turning them up, a store of winter food is evidently provided by these minute and dormant insects with their vegetable incasement, in addition to the earth- worms, slugs, &c., which induce the pheasants to forage so industriously, by scratching up the layers of damp leaves in incipient decay which cover the woodland soil in winter. Not only have we found the spangles plentifully in the crops of pheasants that have been shot, but, on presenting leaves 6 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. covered with them to the common and to the gold pheasants in confinement, we observed the birds to pick them up without a moment's hesitation, and to look eagerly for more." The value of pheasants to the agriculturist is scarcely sufficiently appreciated ; the birds destroy enormous numbers of injurious insects upwards of twelve hundred wireworms have been taken out of the crop of a pheasant ; if this number was consumed at a single meal, the total destroyed must be almost incredible. There is no doubt that insects are pre- ferred to grain, one pheasant shot at the close of the shooting season had in its crop 726 wireworms, one acorn, one snail, nine berries, and three grains of wheat. Mr. F. Bond states that he took out of the crop of a pheasant 440 grubs of the crane fly or daddy longlegs these Iarva3 are exceedingly destructive to the roots of the grass on lawns and pastures. As another instance of their insectivorous character may be mentioned the complaint of Waterton, that they had extir- pated the grasshoppers from Walton Park. They also occasionally eat molluscous animals. Mr. John Bishop, of Llandovery, records that he killed a pheasant on the coast of Islay whose crop was filled with the coloured snails abounding on the bents or grass stems on the coast. Lord Lilford, in his magnificent volumes on the ft Birds of Northamptonshire," writes : " The pheasant, where not preserved in unreasonable numbers, is a good friend to the farmer, from the enormous number of wireworms and other noxious insects which it devours, to say nothing of its liking for the roots of various weeds; but it would be absurd to deny that grain forms its favourite food, and a field of standing beans will, as is well known, draw pheasants for miles. It is very much the fashion to feed the birds with maize ; but, in our own opinion, the flesh of pheasants which have been principally fed upon this corn is very far inferior in flavour to that of those who have found their own living upon what the land may offer them." Like their allies, the domestic fowls, pheasants are occa- FOOD OF THE PHEASANT. sionally carnivorous in their appetite. A correspondent writes : " This morning my keeper brought me a pied cock pheasant, found dead (but still warm) in some standing barley. The bird was in finest condition, and showed no marks what- ever, when plucked, of a violent death. On searching the gullet I extracted a short-tailed field mouse, which had doubtless caused death by strangulation." And a similar instance was recorded by Mr. Hutton, of Northallerton. The Hon. and Rev. C. Bathurst, in a letter published in London's Magazine of Natural History, vol. vii., p. 153, relates that Sir John Ogilvy saw a pheasant flying off with a common slow- worm (Anguis fragilis) ; that this reptile does sometimes form part of the food of the pheasant is confirmed by Mr. J. E. Harting, who recounts, in his work on " The Birds of Middle- sex," that " on examining the crop of a pied pheasant, shot in October, 1864, I was surprised to find in it a common slow- worm (Anguis fragilis) which measured eight inches in length. It was not quite perfect, having lost the tip of the tail ; other- wise, if whole, it would probably have measured nine inches." In October, 1888, Mr. J. B. Footner, of Tunbridge Wells, forwarded me a bottle containing three young vipers that were found with five others of equal size in the crop of a three parts grown hen pheasant, which he himself shot as a wild bird. Their length was slightly in excess of 7in., and the weight of the largest was exactly ^-oz. They were apparently young of the same brood. In his letter Mr. Footner recalled the fact that Sir Kenelm Digby, who lived in the time of Charles I., and married a lady of great beauty, used to feed his wife on capons fatted on young adders, which were believed to preserve beauty. Sir Kenelm Digby, whose portrait may be seen in Vandyke's Icono- graphy, was remarkable as a charlatan, who proposed to cure wounds by applying a sympathetic powder to the weapons they were caused by, and who published a treatise on " Secrets pour la Beaute des Dames/' from which the viper treatment is extracted. 8 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIALIES. The structure of the digestive organs of the pheasant is perfectly adapted to the assimilation of the food on which it feeds. The sharp edge of the upper mandible of the bill is admirably fitted for cutting off portions of the vegetables on which it partly subsists, and the whole organ is equally well adapted for securing the various articles of its extensive dietary. The food, when swallowed, passes into a very capacious membranous crop, situated under the skin at the fore part of the breast. From this organ portions gradually pass into the true digestive stomach, or proventiculus ; this is a short tube, an inch and a half long, connecting the crop with the gizzard. Small as this organ may be, it is one of extreme importance, as the numerous small glands of which it mainly consists secrete the acid digestive or gastric fluid necessary to the digestion of the food ; and in cases in which pheasants or fowls are fed on too great an abundance of animal food, or any highly-stimulating diet, this organ becomes inflamed, and death is frequently the result. From the pro- venticulus the food passes into the gizzard, which is lined with a dense thick skin ; in its cavity the food is ground down to a pulp, the process being assisted by the presence of the numerous small stones and angular pieces of gravel, &c., swallowed by the bird. The food, thus ground to a pulp, passes on into the intestines, which are no less than six feet in length ; in the upper part of this long canal it is mingled with the bile formed in the liver, the pancreatic fluid, &c., and, as it passes from one extremity to the other, the nourish- ment for the support of the animal is extracted ; this being greatly aided by the operation of the two caeca, or blind intestines, which are very large in all the birds of this group. The flight of the pheasant is strong, and is performed by rapid and frequent beats of the wing, the tail at the same time being expanded. The force with which the bird flies may be inferred from the result which has not unfrequently occurred when it has come into contact with thick plate-glass FLIGHT OF THE PHEASANT. 9 ID windows. A correspondent states : " A few days ago, a cock pheasant rose about three hundred yards from my house and flew against the centre of a plate glass window, smashing it into a thousand fragments. The glass was 3ft. Sin. by 3ft. 4in., and -Jin. thick ; and such was the force of the concussion that not a single piece remained six inches square.. A slight snow on the ground rendered the window more than usually a mirror reflecting the outer landscape. It is needless to say the bird was killed instantaneously. Two hen pheasants had on previous occasions been killed in the same way, but the glass was not damaged/' Mr. G. A. Hackett, of Pailton House, Eugby, also wrote as follows : "I was much astonished to-day, at about two o'clock, by hearing a loud crash of glass in my smoking-room, and on going there I found a cock pheasant dead on the floor close to the window, and the plate of glass, which is 4ft. by 3ft. 6in., and ^in. thick, in thousands of fragments. I am certain no blow from a man could have in like manner demolished the glass. The pheasant was a ring-necked, last year's bird, and weighed nearly 31b." These instances occured in the day-time. Sometimes the birds are attracted by a light, as in the following cases : " On a very rough night in January, a hen pheasant flew through the hall window at Merthyr Manor, Bridgend, attracted by a light inside." And the following incident is related as occurring in a village not far from Bangor, on the banks of a river on the opposite side of which is a plantation well stocked with pheasants : " One stormy night there sat in a room of a small public, which had a window facing the plantation, six or seven men enjoying their pipes and beer, when all of a sudden crash went the window, out went the candle, and out rushed the men in great consternation. On examining the room a splendid cock pheasant was found under the table/' The wings, considered with reference to the size and weight of the bird, are short and small; from the secondary quills being nearly as long as the primary, they are very rounded in form, the third and fourth primary feathers being 10 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. the longest. The wings are not adapted to a very prolonged flight, although the denizens of the wilder districts in the country fly with a speed and cover distances that are un- known to the over-fattened birds in our preserves. Long flights are, however, not altogether beyond the powers of the bird. One of unusual length was recorded by Mr. J. Cordeaux, of Great Cotes, Ulceby, who states that "when shooting in the marshes on the Lincolnshire side of the Humber, near Grimsby, a man who works on the sea em- bankment came to say that two pheasants had just flown over from the Yorkshire side, alighting within a few feet of where he was working among the rough grass on the bank. On going to the spot indicated, I at once found and shot them ; they were both hens, and in very good condition. The Humber at this place from shore to shore is nearly four miles across. There was a strong northerly breeze blowing at the time, so that they would cross before the wind, or with the wind a little aslant. I have occasionally found pheasants in the marshes, and near the embankment, which I was sure must have come across, but had no direct evidence of the fact." The comparatively small size of the wings necessitates their being moved with great force and velocity, and conse- quently the moving powers or muscles of the breast are very large and well developed, taking their origin from the deep keel on the breast bone. The tail is long, and tapers to a point ; it is composed of eighteen straight pointed feathers. The pheasant, like most of its congeners, is a terrestrial bird, seeking its food, making its nest, and rearing its young upon the surface of the ground. Its legs, like those of all true rasorial or scratching birds, are strong and muscular, consequently it is capable of running with great speed. The strong blunt claws are admirably adapted for scratching seeds and tuberous roots from the ground, or worms and larvae from beneath fallen leaves. Though seldom taking voluntarily to the water, the SWIMMING OF PHEASANTS. pheasant is quite capable of swimming, as is proved by the following instances. A well-known game preserver writes : " When out walking to-day with my keeper, near the end of a long pond running under one of my woods, we fancied that we heard some young pheasants calling in the high grass. On going up to the place where we had heard the noise, an old hen pheasant got up and flew over the pond, which is about eighteen or nineteen feet wide at this place and about four feet deep. To our astonishment one of the young birds ran down to the water, went into it, and swam safely to the other side after its mother. The young birds could not have been more than fourteen days old." Old birds will also voluntarily swim across rivers, as in the following instance : " While flogging the waters of the Usk, I saw a sight that struck me with astonishment. A fine cock pheasant was walking about on the bank of the river, here quite thirty yards broad and running at the rate of four knots an hour. On our approach he quietly took to the water like a duck, and, after floating down stream a few yards, boldly struck across, and, swimming high and with great ease, reached the bank nearly opposite to the spot whence he set out." And other similar cases are on record, thus Mr. Donald Campbell, of Dunstafforage, Oban, states : " Six pheasants, five cocks and a hen, attempted to fly across Loch Etive from one of the Ardchattan coverts on the north side of the loch, which near that spot varies from half a mile to a mile in width. When about half-way across one of them was seen either to fall or alight on the water, and its example was immediately followed by the other five. Fortunately, the son of the Ardchattan gamekeeper, who was in a boat on the loch at the time, observed the occurrence, and rowed to the spot ; but as he had some distance to go, by the time he reached the birds they were very much exhausted and half drowned, and were drift- ing helplessly with the tide. He got them into the boat and took them ashore, and, after being well dried and placed in warm boxes near a good fire, they all eventually recovered. 12 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. The day was cold and frosty, and there was a slight fog on the water." When wounded and dropped into the water, pheasants swim with facility, and some instances are on record of their diving beneath the surface and rising at some distance. As the breeding season approaches, the crow of the male, resembling the imperfect attempts of a young fowl, may be heard distinctly. It is followed, and not preceded as in the game cock, by the clapping of the wings ; the pheasant and the domestic cock invariably reversing the order of the succession of these two actions. Like the domestic fowl, pheasants will also answer any loud noise, occurring either by day or night ; they have been noticed replying regularly to the signal gun at Shorncliffe, which is fired at sunrise and sunset, and this in coverts situated some miles distant; and the practice with the heavy guns at the various military stations will often cause a chorus of " cucketing " in all the coverts for a great distance round. The display of the plumage during courtship by the males varies in almost every species of gallinaceous birds. That of the pheasant was carefully described by the late Mr. T. W. Wood, in an interesting article on the (f Courtship of Birds." Pheasants seem to possess no other mode of display than the lateral or one-sided method. In this the males disport them- selves so as to exhibit to the females a greater number of their beautiful feathers than could otherwise be seen at one view. The peculiar attitude assumed by the male of the common species is correctly shown in the vignette on page 20 at the end of this chapter ; the wing of the side nearest the female is partly opened and depressed, precisely in the same manner as performed by the male of the common fowl, and, in addition, the tail is expanded, and the upper surface turned towarHs the same side, whilst the bright vermilion skin around the eye is greatly extended, and the little purple aigrettes erected. Singular modifications of this sexual display of the plumage occur in the Argus and Grolden NESTING OF THE PHEASANT. 13 Pheasant and other species, which will be noticed in the chapters relating to those birds. In a state of nature there is little doubt that the pheasant is polygamous. The males are armed with spurs, with which they fight, the stronger driving away the weaker, and the most vigorous propagate their kind. The nest of the female is usually a simple hollow scraped in the ground. After depositing her eggs (usually about eight or nine in number) she is deserted by the male, and the task of incubation and rearing the young depends on her alone. The eggs vary in colour from a greenish brown to a greyish green ; in size they are, on the average, an inch and five-sixths in length, by an inch and five-twelfths in width. The period of incubation is twenty-four days. Hen pheasants, like common fowls, not unfrequently have nests in common, in which case as many as eighteen or twenty eggs will be found together. Sometimes three hens will take to the same nest, and as many as thirty eggs have been seen resulting from their copartnership. It is still more singular that the pheasant and the partridge often share the same nest. Mr Walter Yate, of Pemberton, Shropshire, stated, " About a week ago one of my workmen informed me that he had found a nest containing both partridge's and pheasant's eggs. I accompanied him to the place, and there saw the pheasant and partridge seated side by side with the utmost amity. I then had the birds driven off, and saw fifteen partridge's and sixteen pheasant's eggs laid indiscriminately together. The eggs were placed as though the nest had been common to both." Another correspondent writes : ' ' About three weeks ago, when walking round a small wood belonging to me, and in which I usually breed a good sprinkle of pheasants, I discovered a partridge sitting on the edge of the bank of the wood ; and when she went off to feed I was much astonished to find that she was sitting on nine pheasant's eggs and thirteen of her own, and, after sitting the usual time, hatched them all out." Mr. R. Bagnall-Wild 14 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. records that "in June his keeper noticed three partridge nests, with thirteen, eleven, and eleven partridges' eggs, and four, two, and two pheasants' eggs, respectively in them. He carefully watched, and in all three cases found that the pheasants were hatched with the young partridges; and ID September the young pheasants still kept with their respective coveys of partridges/' Sometimes the hen pheasant, and not the partridge, is the foster parent. In the neighbourhood of Ohesham, on the 6th of May, 1873, three pheasants' nests were observed to contain the following eggs : the first, on which the hen was sitting, twenty-two pheasant's and two French partridge's eggs; the second, eleven pheasant's and five French partridge's eggs ; and the third, six pheasant's and seven French partridge's eggs. Mr. W. D. Collins, of Cuckfield, records the fact that he found a grey partridge sitting on twelve of her own eggs, nine eggs of the red-legged partridge, and nine pheasant's eggs, all the three species having layed in the same nest. Mr. Higgins, of Hambledon, states that ec A pheasant hatched out, in a piece of vetches of mine, seven partridges and five pheasants on July 6th. She sat on nine of her own eggs and eight partridge eggs." In some cases the nest is even of a more composite character, and the eggs of the common fowl, and those of partridges and pheasants, have all been found together ; and instances have been recorded of wild hen pheasants laying in the nests of tame and also of wild ducks, and in the nest of the corncrake. Although there is usually some attempt at concealment under covert, pheasants' nests are not unfrequently placed, even by perfectly wild birds, in very exposed situations. Mr. John Walton, of Sholton Hall, Durham, related the following account of the singular tameness of a wild bred bird : " A hen pheasant a perfectly wild one so far as rearing is con- cerned, for we have no artificial processes here selected as the site for her nest a hedge by a private cart road, where she was exposed to tbe constant traffic of carts, farm servants, and others, passing and repassing her quarters, all of which she NESTING OF THE PHEASANT. 15 took with infinite composure. She was very soon discovered on her nest, and actually suffered herself when sitting to be stroked down her plumage by the children and others who visited her, and this without budging an inch. In fact, she seemed rather to like it. Perhaps she became a pet with the neighbours from this unusual docility, and her brood (fourteen in number) was thereby saved; for every egg was hatched, and the young birds have all got safely away." Habitually a nester on the ground, the hen pheasant will sometimes select the deserted nest of an owl or squirrel as a place for the disposition and incubation of her eggs. Several examples of this occurrence are on record, but the following may suffice to prove that the circumstance is not so unfrequent as may have been supposed. One correspondent writes as follows : {f Our head keeper told me that one of his watchers had found a pheasant's nest up a spruce fir tree. I was incredulous, so I went with him, and had the under-man there to show us. The bird was sitting on the nest an old squirrel's. The man said she had twelve eggs. He also told us that he knew of another in a similar situation in the same plantation. The nest 1 saw was about twelve feet from the ground. The watchers found it in looking for nests of flying vermin, as some had escaped the traps." Another states : ' ' A keeper on the Culhorn estate, when on his rounds in search of vermin, observed a nest, which he took to be that of a hawk, on a Scotch fir tree, about fifteen feet from the ground. On throwing up a stone out flew a fine hen pheasant. The keeper then ascended the tree, and found, to his astonishment, eight pheasants' eggs in an old owl's nest. He removed the eggs, and placed them under a hen, and at the expiration of three d-ays he had eight fine lively pheasant birds." A third states that "at Chaddlewood, near Plympton, Devon, a pheasant has built its nest (twelve feet from the ground) in a fork of an ash tree close to the house, and has now laid eight eggs." 16 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. It is difficult to ascertain whether or not in the instances in which the young are hatched in these elevated situations, they fall out of the nest and survive or are killed and carried away by predatory animals, or whether they are safely removed by the parent birds, and if so, by what means ; even the following accounts do not throw much light upon the subject. A correspondent of The Field stated that " A hen pheasant made her nest in an oak tree, about nine feet from the ground. The young were hatched, and she succeeded in taking seven young ones safely to the ground, leaving five dead in the nest, and one bad egg." A second stated that in the park at Fillingham, Lincoln, a pheasant deposited eight eggs in the nest of a woodpigeon in a fir tree upwards of six- teen feet from the ground ; she hatched out seven of them, but was unfortunate, as four were killed ; they were supposed to have fallen from the nest. And a third reported that on the estate of the Marquis of Hertford, at Sudborne Hall, Suffolk, a pheasant had taken possession of a nest deserted by a sparrow-hawk, in a spruce fir, twenty -five feet from the ground, and hatched eight young ones, seven of which she succeeded in brin ging safely down, but in what manner was not stated. Although as a rule the male pheasant takes no heed of the eggs laid by the female, or of the offspring when hatched, there are some well ascertained exceptions. Wild cock pheasants have been seen sitting in nests in the coverts by perfectly credible witnesses ; and, although it has been suggested that the birds might have been hens that had assumed the male plumage, such an occurrence is even more unlikely than that a cock should sit, for these hens are always perfectly barren, and must have assumed the male plumage at the previous autumnal moult ; in this condition they have never been known to manifest the slightest desire to incubate. Cocks have also been known to protect the young birds, as in the following instance, which occurred in Aberdeenshire : " I have for the last fortnight almost daily watched a cock DATE OF LAYING. 17 pheasant leading about a brood of young ones, whose mother has evidently come to grief. A more attentive and careful nurse could not be than this cock. He boldly follows his young charge on the lawns and to other places where he never ventured before,, finds them food, and stands sentry over them with untiring perseverance. They are thriving so well under his care and growing so fast, that they will soon be able to shift for themselves." The same singular occurrence has also taken place in an aviary. Lord Willoughby de Broke some time since published the following letter : "I have an aviary in which there is a cock pheasant and four or five hens of the Chinese breed ; at the beginning of the laying season the cock scraped a hole in the sand, in which the hens laid four eggs ; he then collected a quantity of loose sticks, formed a perfect nest and began to sit ; he sat most patiently, seldom leaving the nest till the eggs were chipped, when the keeper, afraid of his killing them, took them from him, and placed them under a hen pheasant who was sitting on bad eggs ; they were hatched the next day, and the young birds are now doing well." Pheasants usually commence to lay in this country in April or May, the date varying somewhat with the season and the latitude ; but, in consequence of the artificial state in which they are kept in preserves, and the superabundance of food with which they are supplied, the production of eggs, as in domesticated fowls often takes place at most irregular periods. Many instances are recorded of perfect eggs being found in the oviducts of pheasants shot during the months of December and January. For example, Sir D. W. Legard, writing from Ganton, Yorkshire, on the 27th of December, 1 864, said : " At the conclusion of a day's covert shooting last Tuesday, a hen pheasant, which had been killed, was discovered by a keeper to have a lump of some hard sub- stance in her ; he opened her in my presence, when, to my astonishment, he extracted an egg perfectly formed, shelled, and apparently ready to be laid; it was of the usual size, c 18 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. but the colour, instead of being olive, was a greyish- white." A nest containing an egg has been noticed as early as the 12th of March, and many cases are recorded of strong nests of young during the first few days of May. Lord Warwick's keeper, J. Edwards, in May, 1868, wrote as follows: "Yesterday (the 6th inst.), whilst searching for pheasant eggs in Grayfield Wood, I came upon a nest of thirteen pheasant eggs, twelve just hatched and run, and one left cheeping in the shell. The bird must have begun to lay in the middle of March, as they sit twenty -five days, and they do not very often lay (only every other day, at leasfc at the commencement)." Other cases earlier by three or four days than this instance have been recorded. The Eev. Gr. C. Green, of Modbury, Devon, writes: cc On Sunday, April 18, 1875, as my curate was returning from taking the duty in a neighbouring church, a hen pheasant started from the road- side hedge close to the town, and fluttered before him. While watching her movements he saw eleven young pheasants, apparently newly hatched, fluttering in the hedge, and at the edge of a pond close by. They soon scrambled into some cover, and the mother bird flew off to rejoin them from another quarter. I understand, from inquiry, that this is not a solitary instance of such an early brood of pheasants in South Devon." On the other hand, examples of nests deferred until very late in the year are not unknown. Mr. W. W. Blest, of Biddenden, near Staplehurst, writes : ' ' Whilst partridge shooting on the 3rd of September, 1874, we disturbed a sitting pheasant, the nest containing twelve eggs. We often hear of the early nesting of game birds, but rarely so late in the season." In October, 1869, Mr. Walter E." Tyrell, of Plashwood, near Stowmarket, forwarded to me a young pheasant, with the following letter : ' ' When pheasant shooting with some friends yesterday, the 15th inst., in this neighbourhood, one of the beaters picked up dead, in a path WEIGHT OF PHEASANTS. 19 in the wood we were in, a very young chick pheasant ; it could not have been hatched more than a week. My keeper tells me he has found them (but very rarely) as young in September. I forward the young chick to you, in order that you may inspect it." I carefully examined the young bird, which was not more than two or three days old. These late-hatched birds were in all probability the produce of a second laying during the season. The artificial state in which these birds exist, as supplied with nutritive food and protected in our coverts and preserves, leads to other departures from their natural conditions. Thus variations of plumage and size are much more frequent and more marked than would occur in the case of birds in a perfectly wild state. In some instances the size is very greatly increased. Hen pheasants usually weigh from two pounds to two pounds and a quarter, whilst the usual weight of cock pheasants is from about three pounds to three pounds and a half. Mr. Yarrell, in his " History of British Birds," mentions two unusually large; he says "The lighter bird of the two just turned the scale against four and a half pounds ; the other took the scale down at once. The weights were accurately ascertained, in the presence of several friends, to decide a wager of which I was myself the loser." One of five pounds and half an ounce was sent me by Mr. Carr, of the Strand; this was a last year's bird of the common species. And in 1859 one bird, of the enormous weight of five pounds and three-quarters, was sent by Mr. Akroyd, of Boddington Park, Nantwich, to Mr. Shaw, of Shrewsbury, for preservation. Mr. Akroyd stated that "the bird was picked up with broken leg and wing forty-eight hours after the covert was shot, so had probably lost weight to some extent." In reply to the suggestion that it might possibly have been a large hybrid between the pheasant and the domestic fowl, Mr. Akroyd further stated "that the bird looked all its weight, and was as distinguished amongst its fellows as a turkey would be amongst fowls; yet it had no c 2 20 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. hybrid appearance whatever ; " and Mr. Shaw stated that he weighed it several times. Moreover, he said, " the bird, had it been picked up when shot, would, I have little doubt, have weighed six pounds, there being nothing in its craw but two single grains of Indian corn ; and when the length of time it remained wounded on the ground, with a broken thigh and wing, is taken into consideration, there can be little doubt of the fact." But the largest on record was described in vol. xlvi., p. 179, of The Field. G. C. G. writes: "I have received the following from Mr. Kelly in consequence of a discussion in The Field about the weight of a pheasant : ' Some few years since, while Admiral Sir Houston Stewart was residing at Ganton, he sent me a pheasant that weighed 61b. wanting loz. He was an old bird, and the most splendid in form and plumage that I ever beheld. A few days after- wards being at Ganton, I told Sir Houston that I had weighed the bird, but I thought my weights must be incorrect, and asked him whether he knew its weight. He said, " You are quite right. I weighed it before I sent it to you, and that is my weight." In these cases of exception- ally large birds, it is usually found that the extreme weight is owing to the fattening influence of the maize on which they have been fed. COCK PHEASANT DISPLAYING ITS PLUMAGE. CHAPTEE II. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANTS (CONTINUED). NGN- DOMESTICITY INTRODUCTION INTO BRITAIN DISTRIBUTION. !rT IS sometimes suggested by persons ignorant of the true nature of the pheasant, that it might be domesticated and reared like our ordinary farm- yard fowl. Such persons are apparently not aware |IC that the instinct of domestication is one of the rarest possessed by animals. Man has been for some thou- sands of years capturing, subduing, and taming hundreds of different species of animals of all classes : but of these the number that he has succeeded in really domesticating does not amount to fifty. A very large proportion of animals are capable of being tamed, and rendered perfectly familiar with man; but this is a totally distinct state from one of domestication. The common pheasant is a good example of this distinction. Individual examples may be rendered so tame as to become even troublesome from their courage and familiarity ; but although others have been bred in aviaries for many generations, their offspring still retain their original wildness, and when let out at large betake themselves to the woods and coverts as soon as able to shift for themselves. On the other hand, the allied species, the jungle fowl (Gallua ferugineus), the original of our domestic breeds of poultry, 22 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. if reared in confinement, becomes immediately domesticated, the young returning home at night with a regularity that has given rise to the proverbial saying that " Curses, like chickens, come home to roost." Examples of the tameness of individual pheasants are not rare ; to the fearless nature of a sitting hen I have already alluded. The males become even more familiar, and even at times aggressive; one of the most amusing examples was recorded some time since by a correspondent, who wrote as follows : " Having recently been on a visit to a friend of mine living in Kent, I had an opportunity of there witnessing the effect of an extraordinary antipathy to crinoline exemplified in a fine cock pheasant which inhabited, or rather infested the grounds and shrubbery. He had been originally, I believe, reared on the premises, but had become as wild as any of his fellows, and, after having been lord of a harem of some seven or eight ladies last spring, who had all reared their families and gone off with them, had been left in loneliness, with his temper soured against the female sex at large. His beat was for about a quarter of a mile between the house and the entrance-gate, and on the approach of anything in the shape of crinoline his temper was roused to such a degree that he attacked it with all his might and main, flying up at the unnatural appendage, pecking fiercely with his bill, and striking out at it with his spurs like any game-cock. I witnessed all this with my own eyes, and was not surprised at the terror he had created among the females by whom he was positively dreaded, and not without reason. One lady had attempted to protect herself by taking a terrier as her guardian, who at first offered fight in her defence, but was soon compelled to show the white feather, and at the very sight of his antagonist ran off with his tail between his legs. At length, however, he met with his master in the shape of a gipsy-woman, who being of course uncrinolined, and there- fore considering herself unjustly attacked, set upon him, and not only pulled out his tail, but crushed him with her foot, TAMENESS OF PHEASANTS. 23 and left him on his back apparently in the agonies of death. The domestics, however, went to his assistance, and by their kind attentions he was restored. Still his old antipathy r evived with his returning strength, and in a day or two the sight of crinoline again roused his wrath. Therefore, for fear of his meeting with an untimely end from some other strong-minded woman, it was decided that he should have his wing clipped, and be kept prisoner within the walls of the kitchen-garden." The wife of Mr. Barnes (formerly head keeper to Mr. D. Wynham, of Denton Hall, near Salisbury) carefully nursed a very young hen pheasant with a broken leg. She got well, and in course of time was turned out with the rest of the brood into the adjacent woods. For several seasons after- wards this hen brought her own brood to the keeper's lodge. Mr. T. B. Johnson, in his " Gamekeeper's Directory," mentions one he had reared from the nest that became uncommonly familiar : " It will follow me," he writes, " into the garden or homestead, where it will feed on insects and grass, and I occasionally observed it swallow large worms. Of all things, however, flies appear to be its favourite food. Before he was able to fly, I frequently lifted him into the window, and it was truly amusing to witness his dexterity in fly catching. He had been named Dick, to which he answers as well as possible. Dick is a very social being, who cannot endure being left alone; and if it so happen (as it occasionally does) that the bird finds every person has quitted the room, he immediately goes in search of some of the family ; if the door be shut, and his egress thus denied, he utters the most plaintive noise, evidently testifying every symptom of uneasiness and fear in being separated from his friends and protectors. Dick is a great favourite, and on this account is suffered to take many liberties. When breakfast is brought in he jumps on the table, and very unceremoniously helps himself to bread, or to whatever he takes a fancy; but, different from the magpie or jackdaw 24 PHEASANTS FOE COVERTS AND AVIARIES. under similar circumstances, Dick is easily checked. He is fond of stretching himself in the sunbeams : and if this be not attainable, before the kitchen fire. On being taken into the house he was presented to the view of the cat, the latter at the same time given to understand that the bird was privileged, and that she must not disturb him. The cat is evidently not fond of Dick as an inmate, but she abstains from violence. I have seen her, it is true, give him a blow with her paw, but this only occurs when the bird attempts to take bread, &c., from her; and not always then, as she frequently suffers herself to be robbed by him. Dick has also made friends with my pointers. He sleeps in my bed- room, but is by no means so early a riser as his fraternity in a state of nature ; however, when he comes forth his antics are amusing enough ; he shakes himself, jumps and flies about the room for several minutes, and then descends into the breakfast-room." Whether this bird would or would nut have continued tarne and domesticated during the following breeding season was unfortunately never ascertained, as it partook of the fate of most pets, and was killed accidentally by the opening of a door. The incapacity of pheasants for domestication has been remarked by all those who have tried in vain to rear them as domestic birds. The late Mr. Charles Water-ton, of Walton Hall, made the attempt under the most advantageous circum- stances, and thus recounts the result of his experiments : " Notwithstanding the proximity of the pheasant to the nature of the barndoor fowl, still it has that within it which baffles every attempt on our part to render its domestication complete. What I allude to is, a most singular innate timidity, which never fails to show itself on the sudden and abrupt appearance of an object. I spent some months in trying to overcome this timorous propensity in the pheasant, but I failed completely in the attempt. The young birds, which had been hatched under a domestic hen, soon became very tame, and would even receive food from the hand when it was DATE OF INTRODUCTION. 25 offered cautiously to them. They would fly up to the window, and would feed in company with the common poultry, but if anybody approached them unawares, off they went to the nearest covert with surprising velocity ; they remained in it- till all was quiet, and then returned with their usual con- lidence. Two of them lost their lives in the water by the unexpected appearance of a pointer, while the barndoor fowls seemed scarcely to notice the presence of the intruder ; the rest took finally to the woods at the commencement of the breeding season. This particular kind of timidity, which does not appear in our domestic fowls, seems to me to oppose the only, though at the same time an unsurmountable, bar to our final triumph over the pheasant. After attentive observation, I can perceive nothing else in the habits of the bird to serve as a clue by which we may be enabled to trace the cause of failure in the many attempts which have been made to invite it to breed in our yards, and retire to rest with the barndoor fowl and turkey." With regard to the date of the introduction of the pheasant into England, Mr. Thompson, writing in 1866, says he knows of no records which afford any clue to the period when it was first brought into this country ; and that though probably its acclimatisation does not date back further than fche Norman Conquest, yet it is possible that our Roman invaders may have imported it at a much earlier period, with other imperial luxuries. Lord Lilford considers its introduction by the Romans as conclusively proved. In his "Notes on the Birds of North- amptonshire," he writes : " There appears to be no reason to doubt that the pheasant was introduced into England by the Romans, and the bird has now become so spread over most parts of Europe that it is almost impossible to say where it is really indigenous." This suggestion is possibly near the truth, for the pheasant has been shown by Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins to have been naturalised in this country upwards of eight hundred years. 26 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. Writing to The Ibis for 1869 (page 358), that gentleman says: " It may interest your readers to know that the most ancient record of the occurrence of the pheasant in Great Britain is to be found in the tract ' De inventione Sanctae Crucis nostrae in Monte Acuto et de ductione ejusdem apud Waltham/ edited from manuscripts in the British Museum by Professor Stubbs, and published in 1861. The bill of fare drawn up by Harold for the Canons' households of from six to seven persons, A.D. 1059, and preserved in a manuscript of the date of circa 1177, was as follows (p. 16) : Erant autem tales pitantise unicuique canonico : a f esto Sancti Michaelis usque ad captit jejunii [Ash "Wednesday] aut xii merulae, aut ii agansese [Agace, a magpie (?), Ducange'], aut ii perdices, aut unus phasianus, reliquis teinporibus aut ancse [Geese, Ducange] aut gallinse. " Now the point of this passage is that it shows that Phasianus colchicus had become naturalised in England before the Norman invasion; and as the English and Danes were not the introducers of strange animals in any well authenticated case, it offers fair presumptive evidence that it was introduced by the Roman conquerors, who naturalised the fallow deer in Britain." " The eating of magpies at Waltham, though singular, was not as remarkable as the eating of horse by tlie monks of St. Galle in the time of Charles the Great and the return- ing thanks to God for it : Sit f eralis equi caro dulcis sub cruce Christi ! The bird was not so unclean as the horse the emblem of paganism was unholy." But the conclusion that the pheasant was introduced into England before the Norman Conquest is not regarded as proved by those authorities who consider the tract " De inventione Crucis " as a miracle-mongering work that no cautious antiquary would accept as conclusive evidence. In Dugdale's " Monasticon Anglicanum " is a reference MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF PHEASANTS. 27 by which it appears that the Abbot of Amesbury obtained a licence to kill hares and pheasants in the first years of the reign of King Henry the First, which commenced on the second of August, 1100; and DanielL, in his " Rural Sports/' quotes " Echard's History of England " to the effect that in the year 1299 (the twenty-seventh of Edward I.) the price of a pheasant was fourpence, a couple of woodcocks three- halfpence, a mallard three-halfpence, and a plover one penny. " To these notices/' writes the Rev. James Davies in the Saturday Review, " might have been added another which seems to set the pheasant at a higher premium to wit, that in 1170 Thomas a Becket, on the day of his martyrdom, dined on a pheasant, and enjoyed it, as it would seem from the remark of one of his monks, that ' he dined more heartily and cheerfully that day than usual.' " Those who are interested in the subject will find a most interesting series of extracts respecting the mediaeval history of this bird in Mr. Harting's te Ornithology of Shakespeare," from which we quote the following: " Leland, in his account of the feast given at the inthronisa- tion of George Nevell, Archbishop of York, in the reign of Edward IV., tells us that, amongst other good things, two hundred ' f esauntes ' were provided for the guests. "In the 'Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York/ under date ' the xiiij th day of Novembre/ the following entry occurs : " ' Itin. The same day to Richard Mylner of Byndfeld for bringing a present of f esauntes cokkes to the Queen to Westminster ... ... vs. ' " In the ' Household Book ' of Henry Percy, fifth Earl of Northumberland, which was commenced in 1512, the pheasant is thus referred to : " ' Item, FESATJNTES to be hade for my Lordes own Mees at Principall Eeestes and to be at xijd. a pece.' 28 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 11 1 Item, FESSATJNTIS for my Lordes owne Meas to be hadde at Principalle Feistis ande to be at xijd. a pece.'* "In the year 1536, Henry VIII. issned a proclamation in order to preserve the partridges, pheasants, and herons 'from his palace at Westminster to St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and from thence to Islington, Hampstead, Highgate, and Hornsey Park/' Any person, of whatever rank, who should presume to kill, or in any wise molest these birds, was to be thrown into prison, and visited by such other punishments as to the King should seem meet. " Some interesting particulars in regard to pheasants are * "As a copy of the ' Northumberland Household Book ' is not readily accessible, we give the following interesting extract, showing the price, at that date, of various birds for the table : Capons at iid. a pece leyn (lean). Perttryges at iid. a pece. Ghickeyns at ^d. a pece. Redeshaukes ijd. FTennys at iid. a pece. Bytters (i.e. Bittens) xiicl. Swannys (no price stated). Fesauntes xiid. Geysse iiid. or iiiid. at the moste. Reys (i.e. Ruffs and Reeves) iid. Pluvers id. or i^d. at moste. a pece. Cranys xvid. a pece. Sholardes vid. a pece. Hearonsewys (i.e. Heronshaws or Kyrlewes xiicl. a pece. Herons) xiicl. a pece. Pacokes xiid. a pece. Mallardes iid. a pece. See-Pyes (no price). Woodcokes id. or l^d. at the Wegions at i^d. the pece. moste. Kuottes id. a pece. Teylles id. a pece. Dottrells id. a pece. Wypes (i.e. Lapwings) id. a pece. Bustardes (no price). Seegulles id. or i|d. at the moste. Ternes after iii. a id. Styntes after vi. a id. Great byrdes after iiii. a id. Quaylles iid. a pece at moste. Small byrdes after xii. for iid. Snypes after iii. a id. Larkys after xii. for iid." This extract is especially interesting as throwing light incidentally on the condition of the country ; the unreclaimed state of the land is shown by the abunda-nce and cheapness of the wading birds. Woodcocks at a penny, and snipes at three a penny, contrast strongly with partridges at twopence and pheasants and peacocks at twelvepence each. Nor is the change in the degree of estimation in which the birds are now held less remarkable. Curlews, herons, and bitterns, which are now scarcely valued as edible, ranked equal to pheasants and peacocks, and were three or four times the value of a grouse, whilst a fishy sea-gull was worth two or three chicken or one woodcock. MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF PHEASANTS. 29 furnished by the ' Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry VIII.' For example, under date xvj th Nov. 1 532, we have : " * Itm the same daye paied to the fesaunt breder in rewarde ... ixs. iiijd. " ' Itm the xxv daye paied to the preste the fesaunt breder at Elthm in rewarde ij corons ... ... ... ... ... ixs. iiijd.' 11 And in December of the same year : " ' Itin the xxijd. daye paied to the french Preste the fesaunt breder for to bye him a gowne and other necesarys ... xls.' " From these entries it would appear that even at this date some trouble and expense was incurred in rearing pheasants. No allusion, however, is made to their being shot. They must have been taken in a net or snare, or killed with a hawk. The last-named mode is indicated from another source : * " ' Item, a Fesant kylled with the Goshawke. " ' A notice, two Fesant s and two Partridges killed with the hawks.' " As a rule they are only referred to as being f brought in/ the bearer receiving a gratuity for his trouble. "'Jany- 1536-7. Itm. geuen to Hunte yeoman of the pultry, bringing to hir gee two qwicke (i.e. live) phesants ... vijs. vjd. "'Ap 1 - 1537. Itin. geuen to Grene the ptrich taker bringing a cowple of Phesaunts to my lady's grace iijs. ixd. "'Jan. 1537-8. Itm. geuen to my lady Carow's s'unt bringing a quick Phesaunt ... ... ... ... ijs. " ' Jan. 1543-4. Itm. geuen to Hawkyn, s'uiite of Hertford bringing a phesant and ptrichesf ... ... ... ... iijs. iiijd.' * " ' Extracts from the Household and Privy Purse Accounts of the L'estranges of Huiistanton, 15191578.' (Trans. Roy. Soc. Antiq. 1833.) f'The Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, 15361544.' (Edited by Sir F. Madden, 1831.) " 30 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. " In a survey of the possessions of the Abbey of Grlaston- bury made in 1539, mention is made of a 'game' of sixteen pheasants in the woods at Meare, a manor near G-lastonbury belonging to the Abbey. " The value set upon pheasants and partridges at various periods, as shown by the laws fixing penalties for their destruction, seems to have fluctuated considerably. " By a statute passed in the eleventh year of the reign of Henry VIII. it was forbidden 'to take pheasants or partridges with engines in another's ground without licence in pain of ten pound, to be divided between the owner of the ground and the prosecutor/ By 23 Eliz. c. 10, 'None should kill or take pheasants or partridges by night in pain of 20s. a pheasant, and 10s. a partridge, or one month's imprisonment, and bound with sureties not to offend again in the like kind/ By 1 Jac. I. c. 27, ' No person shall kill or take any pheasant, partridge (&c.), or take or destroy the eggs of pheasants, partridges (&c.), in pain of 20s., or imprisonment for every fowl or egg, and to find sureties in 20 not to offend in the like kind/ Under the same statute, no person was permitted ' to buy or sell any pheasant or partridge, upon pain or forfeit of 20s. for every pheasant, and 10s for every partridge/ By 7 Jac. I c. 11, ' Every person having hawked at or destroyed any pheasant or partridge between the 1st of July and last of August, forfeited 40s. for every time so hawking, and 20s. for every pheasant or partridge so destroyed or taken/ Lords of manors and their servants might take pheasants and partridges in their own grounds or precincts in the daytime between Michaelmas and Christmas. But every person of a mean condition having killed or taken any pheasant or partridge, forfeited 20s. for each one so killed, and had to find surety in 20 not to offend so again/' For an early notice of the pheasant in Suffolk, namely in 1467, Mr. Harting has referred me to the household expenses of Sir John Howard, Knight, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, INTRODUCTION INTO IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 31 edited by Beriah Botfield for the Roxburgh Club, wherein (at p. 399) under date of April, 1467, at Ipswich, there is the entry: "Item xii. fesawntes pryse xii s ." He adds that there is apparently no earlier mention of the pheasants in Norfolk than some references in the accounts of the I/Estranges at Hunstanton in 1519, and the entry above quoted is the earliest for Suffolk. In Essex, the pheasant is mentioned in a bill of fare, A.D. 1059 (as already noticed) and this is apparently the earliest allusion to the bird to be found in any part of England. Mr. Harting further informs me that he has seen an ancient Psalter belonging to Lord Aldenham, in which there is a very fair coloured portrait of a cock pheasant, date A.D. 1260. In Ireland, writes Mr. W . Thompson, in his natural history of that country, ff The period of its introduction is unknown to me, but in the year 1589 it was remarked to be common ." Fynes Moryson, who was in Ireland from 1599 to 1603, observes that there are " such plenty of pheasants as I have known sixty served up at one feast, and abound much more with rails, but partridges are somewhat scarce/' In Scotland the pheasant does not appear to have been preserved at a very early period. Mr. E. Gray, in his work on " The Birds of the West of Scotland," says : " The first mention of the pheasant in old Scotch Acts is in one dated 8th June, 1594, in which year a keen sportsman occupied the Scottish throne." He might have been called "James the protector " of all kinds of game, as in the aforesaid year he " ordained that quhatsumever person or persoues at ony time hereafter sail happen to slay deir, harts, pheasants, foulls, par tricks, or other wyld foule quhatsumever, ather with gun, croce bow, dogges, halks, or girnes, or be uther ingine quhatsumever, or that beis found schutting with ony gun therein," &c., &c., shall pay the usual " hundreth punds," &c. The distribution of the pheasant over Great Britain and 32 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. Ireland at the present time is very general, it being found in all parts of the kingdom where there is congenial shelter and some slight attempt at preservation and protection, without which it would soon be extirpated by poachers and its numerous natural enemies. It is abundant even in the most populous counties, and is not at all uncommon in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis ; but it is in the well-wooded and highly preserved districts of England that these birds most abound, and where they are excessively numerous. " The pheasant/' writes Mr. Sterland, in his " Birds of Sherwood Forest/' "abounds on all the estates in the forest district, and to such an extent that few would credit the immense numbers. They are almost as tame as barndoor fowls, and may be seen on the skirts of the various plantations. Carefully tended and fed, and all their natural enemies destroyed, they become so accustomed to the presence of man that in many parts they will hardly take the trouble to get out of the way, and are scarcely entitled to the appellation of wild. Under circumstances so favourable they multiply rapidly, but a natural limit seems to be set to their increase, and frequently, where they are most abundant, large numbers are found dead without apparent cause ; these are always exceedingly fat and their plumage in the glossiest condition ; they seem to drop down and die without a struggle. I have had them brought to me in this state, and have found their flesh plump and of good colour, and every feather smooth and perfect." I should rather incline to attribute the death in these cases to apoplexy, arising from over-feed- ing on maize and stimulating artificial food, than to any epidemic disease arising from overcrowding, as this attacks the young and destroys them long before they arrive at maturity. " In Norfolk/' writes Mr. Stevenson, in his admirable work on the birds of that country, " there are many portions where the pheasant exists in a perfectly wild state, and thrives well under the protection of the game laws, both soil THE PHEASANT IN SCOTLAND. 33 and climate being alike favourable. It is in such districts, almost exclusively, that one still meets with the pure Phasianus colcliicus, free from any trace of the ring-necked or Chinese cross in its plumage, but offering at the same time a poor contrast to those hybrid birds both in size and weight. Besides the thick undergrowth in woods and plantations, pheasants are particularly partial to low damp situations, such as alder and osier carrs, by the river side. In this country, also, stragglers from some neighbouring coverts are not unfrequently found on the snipe marshes surrounding the broads, where the sportsman, following up his dog at a ' running point/ is suddenly startled by the whirr of a noble ' long tail/ when never dreaming of any larger game than rails or water-hens." In Scotland it is now very generally distributed in the western counties, from Wigtown in the south to Sutherland in the north. Mr. K. Gray writes : " In the neighbourhood of Loch Lomond, it may occasionally be noticed on the mountain sides, at a considerable elevation, sometimes as far up as twelve hundred feet. In Shemore Grlen, I have seen male birds rise from the heath among the rocks, and, wheeling round, direct their flight down the valley with extraordinary speed. Very different indeed is the flight of these strong-winged natives of the glen from that of over-fed birds in wooded preserves ; and as one bird after another shoots past in high air, one can hardly resist the impression that, if left to its own selection, the pheasant would adapt itself wonderfully to the drawbacks of its adopted country. Mr. Elwes informs me that he has frequently seen pheasants in Islay get up in the most unlikely places, such as an open moor, miles away from any covert or corn-field, and sometimes in a wet bog, where one would be more likely to find a snipe. On that island, where it was introduced about thirty years ago by Mr. Campbell, the pheasant is now not uncommon, and appears to be on the increase. In the Outer Hebrides it has likewise been D 34 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. introduced into Lewis by Sir James Matheson, who has obligingly informed me that, since its introduction twelve or fifteen years ago, it has become fairly established, although it has not increased to the extent that might have been expected in a more favourable locality. ' The deep drains in the peat moss/ writes Sir James, ' are supposed to be the cause of the death of the young chicks by their falling into them. For some years at first there was a want of covert for pheasants, but they are now better off in this respect, and are increasing gradually. Some of the first brood wandered about sixteen miles to the west side of the island, it is supposed in quest of covert/ " The introduction of the pheasant into the northern districts of Scotland is, however, of comparatively recent date, for in the sixth edition of Moubray's " Domestic Poultry/' 1830, it is stated: "In 1826, a solitary cock pheasant made his appearance as far north as a valley of the Grampians, being the first that had been seen in that northern region; " and my old friend, Andrew Halliday, told me that he remembered perfectly the introduction of the birds into the coverts near Banff belonging to the Earl of Fife, in which locality, Thomas Edwards, the Scottish naturalist, whose life has been so graphically written by Mr. Smiles, tells us it now seems to thrive very well, and is a beautiful ornament to parks and woods . Messrs. Buckley and Harvie-Brown, in the " Fauna of the Orkney Islands," relate several unsuccessful attempts to in- troduce pheasants as wild birds into Orkney. In Ireland it is also abundant, the common species being, according to Mr. Thompson, the well-known natural historian of the island, frequent in the various wooded parts, at least where it has been protected and preserved. " In the counties of Antrim and Down," remarks this writer, " the ring-necked variety considered to have originally proceeded from a cross between the common and true ring-necked pheasant (P. torquatus) is not uncommon." THE PHEASANT IN SWEDEN. 35 On the continent of Europe the pheasant is widely diffused throughout almost all the congenial localities in the south and central portions, where any effort is made in favour of its pro- tection. In Scandinavia it has been successfully introduced j in 1867 we were informed by Mr. L. Lloyd, in his " Game Birds of Sweden and Norway," that it is not found, although attempts on a large scale were made to introduce it by the late King Oscar ; but from the severity of the climate, and from the country swarming with vermin and birds of prey of all sorts, the experiment, in Mr. Lloyd's opinion, was not likely to be attended with success. Since that date the attempt has been successfully made by Baron Oscar Dickson, who, in 1873, reared seven or eight hundred birds. These have done well, for, in the Morgenblad of November 10, 1877, it is recorded that "Mr. (now Baron) Oscar Dickson and party shot in one day, on his property Bokedal, in Sweden, ninety pheasants, one deer, one hare, and one woodcock. There were five guns." And the same journal mentions that a brace of pheasants lived at full liberty on an estate in the neighbourhood of Christiania during the winter of 1876-7 without being fed or taken care of, and that they hatched in the summer of 1877, and reared four full-grown young ones. A brace more were let loose early in the spring of the same year, and also hatched and reared in the open. The first brace escaped from a pen, and nobody knew what had become of them. It was supposed that they were either frozen to death during the severe winter, had died of starvation, or had fallen an easy prey to foxes, cats, or hawks. But they survived, and found both shelter and food for themselves. Since that date they have increased rapidly, and on November 14 and 15, 1893, the Crown Prince shot over the Baron's preserves on the Island Wisingso, in the Wetter Lakes, when 1548 pheasants were killed by six guns. In New Zealand, the Great Britain of the southern hemisphere, the introduction of the pheasant has been a great success ; so much so, that in a single season, that of 1871, D 2 36 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. six thousand birds were bagged in the immediate neighbour- hood of the city of Auckland. Pheasants were first introduced into the province of Auckland about twenty years since, seven males and two females, the only survivors of two dozen shipped in China, comprising the original stock of the Chinese species. At the same time a number of the common species were liberated in another part of the colony. These were supplemented by six more Chinese birds in 1856. Both species have multiplied exceedingly, but their multiplication has in many places been lessened by the employment of phosphorised oats laid down to poison the rabbits. The pheasant has also been introduced into several of the islands of the Pacific. By the kindness of Lieut. Ch. de Crespigny, of H.M.S. Curagoa, I have received a specimen of the pheasants which are now breeding in the Samoan Islands. This pheasant is undoubtedly of the Chinese ring-necked species, the neck being nearly surrounded by the distinguishing white collar, but there is a considerable difference in the colour of the neck at the base and the scapular feathers, which are much lighter than in our ordinary species. The Chinese pheasant was introduced by the Portuguese into the island of St. Helena in the year 1513, and has increased in numbers to a very considerable extent ; but the present representatives of the original stock' differ somewhat from their ancestors, both in the colour and markings of the plumage, as is described in the chapter on that species. Yery successful attempts have been made to introduce the different species of pheasants into North America as game birds, where in some parts they have become thoroughly acclimatised. The original stocks from whence the pheasants in the Western States were descended were imported direct from China, consequently the ring-necked pheasant (P. torquatus) is common in localities where the old English pheasant (P. colchicus) is almost unknown, although the latter has been introduced into the Eastern States on the Atlantic sea board. THE PHEASANT IN NORTH AMERICA. 37 In Oregon, where they were set at liberty in 1881, they have now become common, and they have spread and multiplied so well that complaints are made of their depredations in the grain fields. The reports of the residents to the official inquiries are very interesting. Mr. Tyler, of Forest Grove, Oregon, writing in January, 1889, states : " The females produce fifteen to eighteen eggs each litter, and hatch them all. . . . The old ones have lots of nerve, and will fight a hawk or anything that comes near them. The cocks will go into a barn yard and whip the best fowls we have, and run things according to their own notion. . Their favourite haunts are low grounds near the fields of grain, on which they depredate. . . . The golden pheasants have become numerous. Occasionally one is seen in our vicinity, about ninety miles from where they were turned loose four years ago ; they are hardy, easily domesti- cated, but not so prolific as the ring-necks. Their flesh is white and tender." A very good idea of the manner in which these species have succeeded in their new abode may be gathered from the circumstance that the farmers are shooting them as a nuisance, as they destroy the wheat. An interesting fact is that the gold pheasant (Thaumalea picta) kept in England only as an ornamental aviary bird has become wild in Oregon, and the Americans have found its flesh white and tender. I have eaten gold pheasants that had run wild in this country, and can fully indorse the statement. I have often wondered that some landed proprietor, living in a suitable locality bordering on woods and coverts, to whom beauty was of the first consideration, had not attempted to rear the gold pheasant in the open. The birds can be bred in a wild state, and yet remain so fearless as to come and feed from the hand ; and it would be difficult to imagine any more gorgeous ornament to a country house than would be afforded by these birds. 38 PHEASANTS FOB COVERTS AND AVIARIES. Nevertheless, there is a much more beautiful bird than even the golden pheasant, and that is the cross between it and the Amherst pheasant (T. amherstice] . This is not a sterile hybrid, but is perfectly fertile, either inter se, or with either of the parent races. For breeding in the open, it would be found hardier than either of the pure breeds from which it is descended, and, as it is larger than the golden pheasant, would make a better bird for the table, should anyone think of killing and eating an object of such surpassing beauty. In the Eastern States the pheasants are in certain localities doing very well; as many as a thousand birds have been reared and turned out by a single keeper, and the pheasant is generally regarded as the future game bird of the country, as it can stand not only the severe heat of summer, but the cold and blizzards of the winter. A number of game clubs have been formed for their protection, and large numbers are raised in the Long Island preserves. They are also extending in several parts of New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. The Game Commissioners of Ohio are encouraging their breeding, and, to quote the words of the Boston Herald, " the outlook for the handsomest and most delicious game bird in the world is quite rosy in this country." In the countries nearest to the locality from whence the common pheasant is supposed to have been derived, it is not, strange to say, abundant; thus the Rev. H. B. Tristram informs us that it does not appear to be known in Syria. In Greece, the Hon. T. L. Powys, writing in The Ibis, informs us that " The only localities in which I have seen pheasants in these parts were once on the Luro river, near Prevesa, in March, 1857, on which occasion I only saw one, the bird having never previously been met with in that part of the country; and again in December of the same year, in the forests near the mouth of the river Drin, in Albania, where it is comparatively common, and where several fell to our guns. In this latter locality, the pheasant's habitat seems to be confined to a radius of from twenty to thirty miles to the THE PHEASANT IN ASIA MINOR. 39 north, east, and south of the town of Alessio a district for the most part densely wooded and well watered, with occasional tracts of cultivated ground, Indian corn being apparently the principal produce, and forming, with the berries of the privet (which abounds throughout Albania) , the chief food of the present species. We heard many more pheasants than we saw, as the woods were thick and of great extent, our dogs wild, and we lost a great deal of time in m aking circuits to cross or avoid the numerous small but deep streams which intersect the country in every direction. This species is particularly abundant on the shores of the Gulf of Salonica, about the mouth of the river Yardar ; and I have been informed, on good authority, that pheasants are also to be found in the woods of Yhrakori, in ^tolia, about midway between the gulfs of Lepanto and Arta." With regard to the present distribution of the species, Mr. Gould, in his " Birds of Asia," states that the late Mr. G. T. Yigne shot it in a wild state at the Lake of Apollonia, thirty-five miles from Broussa, to the south of the sea of Marmora, and that the late Mr. Atkinson found it on the Kezzil-a-Gatch and the country to the west of the river Ilia. Mr. C. G. Danford, in his notes on the ornithology of Asia Minor, writes : " The English Consul, Mr. Gilbertson, informed us that pheasants, though generally becoming scarce, were still common near Lake Apollonia, where a couple of guns had last year killed over sixty head in two or three days shooting." (Ibis, 1880, p. 98.) Lord Lilford, writing in 1895, states : " The only country in which we have personally met with it in an unpreserved and perfectly wild state is on the shores of the Adriatic, near Alessio, in Albania, where it is, or was, by no means un- common in the low-lying forest country near the mouth of the river Drin; it is also to be found in considerable numbers near Salonica and in certain other localities in European Turkey. But the best authorities seem to agree that the true home and headquarters of the species are the shores of the 40 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. Caspian, the valleys of the Caucasus, and Northern Asia Minor. Very closely allied forms, however, are to be met with from the Caspian, through Asia, to the shores and islands of China." Professor H. H. Giglioli, writing of Corsica, states : " I was repeatedly assured of the presence in the island, among the hills of Aleria on the eastern coast, of the pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) in a perfectly wild condition. I see that Mr. Jesse reports the same thing. ... I am still making inquiries on the subject ; but, as far as I can see, no record of its introduction by man is forthcoming." (Ibis, April, 1881.) The vignette represents the head of a hen pheasant with a singular beak, the upper mandible having passed between the sides of the lower jaw. The bird was found dead from starvation. It is evident that the deformity was caused by the bird flying against a branch, the blow bending the upper mandible and causing it to pass between the rami of the lower. CHAPTEE III. MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES. FORMATION OF COVERTS. EFORB any satisfactory progress can be made in the preservation of pheasants, the existence of good and well-protected coverts is indispensable ; and where these do not naturally exist, the very first action of the game preserver must be to effect their plantation on a scale commensurate with his desires. This necessarily cannot be done without expense, but a large stock of pheasants cannot be secured, save under the most exceptional circumstances, without a very considerable outlay. Some years since the subject of the formation of coverts for pheasants was discussed in a very exhaustive manner in the columns of The Field, and some admirable practical letters, detailing the experiences of the writers, appeared in that paper : these are worthy of the most attentive consideration, and I have great pleasure in availing myself of the opportunity of quoting from them. One of the most practical of the writers, the late Mr. R. Carr Ellison, of Dunston Hill, Durham, strongly advocated the formation of pheasant roosts of spruce and silver firs, as affording the birds absolute security against the attacks of night poachers. He writes : " A number of country gentlemen who do not consider field sports of primary importance, feel it right to abstain from the preserving of 42 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. pheasants. They see that the temptation which these birds offer, when perched upon naked larches and other trees, at night, is too strong to be resisted by many a lad or working man in the vicinity, who, but for this particular allurement to evil, might go on respectably and quietly enough. They know that their duty towards their own sons is to keep them out of needless temptations, and they are unwilling to expose the sons of other and poorer men to trials which experience shows they too often cannot resist. Some have forbidden all night watching of these birds, trusting them entirely to the protection of the pines and firs scattered in their plantations, in the branches of which it is impossible for any one to see the pheasants which happen to select them as a roosting- place. Now, I have for twenty-two years preserved these birds in very considerable numbers without any night watch- ing, and in a country where all my neighbours have been repeatedly visited by gangs of poachers coming sometimes from considerable distances, as well as by occasional depre- dators of the vicinity. I resolved to reject all night watching, and one of the first things that I did, as a very young man, was to plant ten acres of spruce fir and Scotch pine in a central and sheltered part of the estate, which might serve as an impregnable roosting-place for pheasants. This was thirty years ago and more. At ten years of age, the plantation was already of great service, and at fifteen was invaluable. As it has been regularly thinned, it is now as good as ever. A number of birch-trees were intermixed, which were very useful in drawing up and hastening the growth of the spruces without exhausting the soil, as too great a multitude of firs would have done. Nor do the pheasants resort to the birch at night as they do to some other trees, larch especially, because they find that its branches are not sufficiently horizontal to afford commodious perches. " Ten years later I formed a second pheasant-roost of two acres in extent, very near my house, and of this I have had the full benefit for many years past. It is generally full of COVERTS FOR PHEASANTS. 43 pheasants, and not one of them is visible to the keenest eye in the clearest moonlight. It consists of spruce and silver fir, regularly and unsparingly thinned to keep the trees in health and vigour. We never think of night watching, even though guns be heard on adjoining estates, and the poachers have long given us up in despair. This lesser stronghold is kept sacred from the guns of sportsmen, who are sure to find the cock pheasants dispersed through all the other plantations during the daytime. The first thing the birds do on a winter's morning, after pecking up a few beans near their roost, is to wander in search of their natural wild food in the woodlands, of which food the tuberous root of the celandine, or wood- ranunculus, forms here a principal part. But, besides the remains of acorns and beech-nuts, they feed, I believe, much on the fallen keys of the ash and sycamore, on hips and haws, and on tender blades of grass, besides innumerable worms, eggs of slugs, and larvae of insects. Tempted by these dainties, and in frosty weather even by the crisp green leaves of the holly, the cock pheasant will leave his beans and barley, and betake himself to freer haunts every fine day, and there the sportsman will find him ; but, if his life be spared, he seldom fails to return at night to his warm roost among the spruces, only with the advance of spring will he quit it; for habit has made him luxurious as to his nights' quarters, and more sensitive of cold than less lucky pheasants. " The Scotch pine is not nearly so tempting to the pheasant at night as the spruce and silver firs, because its branches are not sufficiently horizontal ; yet, on dry hungry soils, it must be largely intermixed, since the firs are not to be depended on to flourish on such ground. In some cases, a stronghold may be formed entirely of hollies, Portugal laurels, and yews. For hen pheasants it will be excellent ; but the cocks, which prefer to roost higher, should have a few firs or pines close at hand for their accommodation. All food should be given in or near to these secure nocturnal retreats." 44 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. Kespecting the conversion of existing mixed plantations into night coverts for pheasants, the same gentleman remarks that " any plantation containing a due proportion of pines, or of spruce and silver fir, can be readily made a secure roosting- place for pheasants, if conveniently situated for the purpose, and not too much exposed to violent winds. All that is necessary is to cut out the larches as rapidly as can be done without letting in the wind too suddenly. The oaks, ashes, beeches, &c., may be allowed to stand wherever they do not injure a thriving pine or fir. The larches only are a dangerous temptation to the pheasants at roosting time. Their perfectly horizontal branches, and the considerable amount of shelter which their numerous twigs and regular head afford to the birds, induce many to perch in them; whereas young oaks, ashes, &c., attract very few indeed. If the plantation consisted entirely of resinous trees, so that none of the last-mentioned hardwood trees are present, then we have to consider what is to be done to fill up the vacancies. If the soil be tolerably moist and fertile, I would recommend that all the larger openings be filled with the best and strongest plants of silver fir that can be procured say from two to three feet in height. Let a cluster of three or more of these be planted in pits, carefully prepared with spade and pickaxe, about five feet asunder, in the centre of every opening; for it is a pity to waste such plants in closer proximity to tall pines and spruces. If there be room for only one silver fir, let only one be planted. This species is not very liable to be nibbled by hares and rabbits if protected for the first year. Let the branches of the felled larches, with which the ground must still be half covered, be drawn around these young plants without delay, for very little will suffice to turn the enemy aside. " Silver firs are very preferable to spruces or pines for filling up vacancies, for these latter, when drawn up slender by shade and shelter, are sure to be ruined by hares and rabbits, whereas the silver fir is of a different habit, and will COVERTS FOR PHEASANTS. 45 not be drawn up in the same manner, nor is its taste so attractive to the marauders. It also bears being removed large from the nursery, with very little injury or check to its growth. Consequently, large plants of it, with earth adhering, though somewhat costly, are well worth their price to the planter who knows where and how to use them. Around these, and nearer to the tall pines and spruces, may be tried plants of the holly-leaved berberis and common laurel, which may not improbably succeed. Immediately under the pines and spruces it is useless to plant anything. The only covert to be obtained there is from heaps of branches left upon the ground as often as the trees are thinned. And this should be done almost annually, to ensure plenty of room to the best and most thriving amongst them, whose side branches will then gradually become more or less pendulous, and so will afford far more shelter than could be obtained from a larger number of trees standing too thick. Pheasants in a covert like this need no great quantity of shelter upon the ground, for they sit, even during the daytime, chiefly in the tree-tops. They bask there, on the south side of the summit of a spruce or pine, in the sun's rays, with great delight ; and in heavy snow-storms whole days will often pass when they never descend to feed, but prefer to sit quiet, eating the green spines of these resinous trees (in the manner of the black grouse and capercailzie) when crispened by the frost, and depending upon snow by way of beverage. I have strongly advocated the spruce and silver firs as affording the most tempting perch to the birds at nightfall; still, be it under- stood, that the Scotch pine, pinaster, Weymouth pine (P. laricio) and others are all excellent. All that is needed is a little generalship and foresight in pheasant preservers, and a determination to confide in these resources, rather than in the expensive, dangerous, and inefficient practice of employing night watchers." Commenting on these suggestions, another correspondent writes : " I am not aware that the practical advantages and 46 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. excellence of the plan of planting large clumps or squares of spruce, either alone or blended with silver firs, and mixing, or not, a few deciduous trees with them, for the special purpose of forming pheasant roosts, have ever been so fully and perspicuously set forth as explained in the previous article. I could quote an instance of extensive coverts having been planted on a similar principle, save that oaks were planted in lieu of birch, with the ultimate view of affording these birds the opportunity of preening their plumes whilst perched on the topmost boughs, and enjoying themselves in this secluded retreat during bright weather, to which luxury, under such circumstances, they are very partial. In these cases the Spanish chesnut tree might sometimes perhaps be found an eligible substitute for either the birch or the oak. The larch undoubtedly is a favourite roosting tree with the pheasant, so much so indeed that I have seen odd ones roosting in larches growing within a few yards only of the impenetrable spruce grove. Besides being horizontal, the branches of the larch are rough, affording good foothold, and when the tree is properly grown are but at short distances one above the other, whilst, the collaterals being numerous, the tree in reality affords far more shelter than it appears capable of yielding, though, of course, far too little to conceal the bird from the prying eye of the night poacher. Pheasants are remarkably fond of ( hips ; ' and if the wild rose tree which produces them be kept low by a proper attention to pruning, not only can the birds reach the fruit easily, but the branches stool out and afford admirable covert. Cock pheasants are naturally of a vagrant turn, and at times will ' leave their beans and barley/ in order to indulge in this their favourite propensity to rove in search of their natural wild food in the woodlands, hedgerows, &c. Early in December last I received a brace of remarkably fine young cock pheasants shot on a manor where the best artificial food is abundantly provided, yet the crop of one of them contained ten full-sized acorns. Apart, too, from their utility as being by far the warmest, COVERTS FOR PHEASANTS. 47 most sheltered, and the only thoroughly poacher-proof night coverts for these timid birds, which at roosting time usually court the densest sylvan shade these evergreen groves possess the signal advantage of harmonising well with, and adding singular beauty to, the surrounding scenery; whilst the internal gloom lucus a non lucendo pervading them, has also its own peculiar charms, though it be of a sombre character." It may be remarked that evergreen night coverts are not so essential south of the Trent, owing to the vigorous growth of underwood in the southern counties, which renders it almost impossible for poachers to traverse the coverts by night, even during bright moonlight ; so that pheasants roosting on deciduous trees are much safer than they would be in the north, where underwood is comparatively feeble and scanty. Writing to me on this subject, Mr. Carr Ellison added: " In the extreme north of England, and in Scotland, under- wood of bramble grows feebly, except along warm southerly slopes. Nevertheless nature introduces another covert plant of great value, which fears neither cold shade, nor open and windy exposure namely, the native tussock grass of moor- edges and upland pastures, Air a ccespitosa, popularly called "bull-fronts," of which most of our exposed woodlands are full. It is easily transplanted, or propagated by seed, on which latter both pheasants and black game feed. It is a favourite covert for hares, affording perfect protection from the cold winds that sweep through plantations destitute of underwood, like too many in the north. "Yet these apparently unpromising strips or clumps of bare stems are often frequented by fine broods of self -reared pheasants, thanks to the bull-fronts and bracken." If it be desired to see the pheasants in the neighbourhood of the mansion, it should be borne in mind that the shrub- beries of rhododendron so frequently seen skirting lawns and pleasure grounds are not frequented by pheasants like those 48 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. of yew, holly, and privet, chiefly because no fallen berries are to be found underneath them. But if a handful of barley, peas, or beans be thrown from time to time among the more open and taller rhododendrons, the pheasants will soon learn to resort to them, after which some of the same fare may be cast into the thicker parts, where the birds will soon find it. In this way our beautiful rhododendron thickets near the garden and mansion may be utilised for pheasants more than heretofore. The late Mr. Charles Waterton, who protected every bird in his domain, published the following details of his method of preserving the pheasants at Walton Hall : tf This bird has a capacious stomach, and requires much nutriment, while its timidity soon causes it to abandon those places which are disturbed. It is fond of acorns, beech mast, the berries of the hawthorn, the seeds of the wild rose, and the tubers of the Jerusalem artichoke. As long as these, and the corn dropped in the harvest, can be procured, the pheasant will do very well. In the spring it finds abundance of nourish- ment in the sprouting leaves of young clover ; but from the commencement of the new year till the vernal period, their wild food affords a very scanty supply, and the bird will be exposed to all the evils of the Vagrant Act, unless you can contrive to keep it at home by an artificial supply of food. Boiled potatoes (which the pheasant prefers much to those in the raw state) and beans are, perhaps, the two most nourishing things that can be offered in the depth of winter. Beans in the end are cheaper than all the smaller kinds of grain, because the little birds, which usually swarm at the place where pheasants are fed, cannot swallow them; and, if you conceal the beans under yew or holly bushes, or under the lower branches of the spruce fir tree, they will be out of the way of the rooks and ringdoves. About two roods of the thousand-headed cabbage are a most valuable acquisition to the pheasant preserve. You sow a few ounces of seed in April, and transplant the young plants 2ft. asunder, in the FORMATION OF COVERTS. 49 month of June. By the time that the harvest is all in, these cabbages will afford a most excellent aliment to the pheasant, and are particularly serviceable when the ground is deeply covered with snow. I often think that pheasants are unintentionally destroyed by farmers during the autumnal seed-time. They have a custom of steeping the wheat in arsenic water. This must be injurious to birds which pick up the corn remaining on the surface of the mould. I some- times find pheasants, at this period, dead in the plantations, and now and then take them up weak and languid, and quite unable to fly. I will mention here a little robbery by the pheasants, which has entirely deprived me of a gratification I used formerly to experience in an evening's saunter down the vale. They have completely exterminated the grass- hoppers. For the last fourteen years I have not once heard the voice of this merry summer charmer in the party. In order to render useless all attempts of the nocturnal poacher to destroy the pheasants, it is absolutely necessary that a place of security should be formed. I know of no position more appropriate than a piece of level ground at the bottom of the hill, bordered by a gentle stream. About three acres o this, sowed with whins, and surrounded by a holly fence to keep the cattle out, would be the very thing. In the centre of it, for the space of one acre, there ought to be planted spruce fir trees, about 14ft. asunder. Next to the larch, this species of tree is generally preferred by the pheasants for their roosting-place ; and it is quite impossible that the poachers can shoot them in these trees. Moreover, magpies and jays will always resort to them at nightfall ; and they never fail to give the alarm on the first appearance of an enemy. Six or seven dozen of wooden pheasants, nailed on the branches of trees in the surrounding woods, cause unutterable vexation and loss of ammunition to these amateurs of nocturnal plunder. Small clumps of hollies and yew trees, with holly hedges round them, are of infinite service, when planted at intervals of one hundred and fifty E 50 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. yards. To these the pheasants fly on the sudden approach of danger during the day, and skulk there till the alarm is over." It is sometimes desirable to supply the want of ground covert for young birds in fir plantations where there is only short grass. The readiest mode of doing this is to use the trimmings of hedges, boughs, and tops of trees ; the latter should be cut about a yard long and stuck in holes made with a crowbar. The high grass soon grows in amongst the sticks, and makes very good ground covert, which will last some years; or the roots of young spruce trees may be cut on one side, when the trees may be pulled down into a nearly horizontal position, and kept so by filling up the hole with the earth dug out. The vignette represents the head of a pheasant in which the upper mandible had been shot away; nevertheless, the bird when killed was in good condition. CHAPTEE IV. MANAGEMENT OE PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES (CONTINUED). FEEDING IN COVERTS. HE FOOD necessary to keep together a large stock of pheasants during the winter months, and prevent them straying to adjoining preserves, may be supplied in various modes. The birds may either be hand-fed day by day in the same manner as domestic fowls j or from troughs which are so constructed as to prevent the food being accessible to smaller birds ; or they may be supplied with small stacks of unthrashed corn, from which to help themselves. " If fed by hand, a fixed place is necessary, to which the pheasants must be accustomed to resort at a particular hour, otherwise the sparrows and other small birds will have far more than their fair share of the grain, particularly in severe weather when the ground is frozen hard. Fed in this manner, the birds become almost as tame as farm-yard fowls. In order to accustom them to one spot, at the end of September or earlier, according to the season, carry a few bundles of beans and barley, in the straw, to the spots in the coverts which are selected for feeding places ; by watching these bundles it will be soon found when they have attracted the notice of the birds, and when it is observed that they have been attacking them, the better plan is to pull them apart, so E 2 52 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. as to enable the corn to be found more readily. When the corn is beginning to decrease, feed from the hand, daily ; and, in order to ensure regularity, allow one man to distribute at the feeding-place, among the decaying barley-straw and beanhaulm, a small bagful of beans and barley, as early as he can find his way to the spot in the morning, concealing the corn as well as he is able; later in the day, say towards three or four in the afternoon, again deposit a mixture of barley and white peas, concealing the corn as before. In this way scarcely a grain of corn is lost. Woodpigeons and jays will sometimes intrude ; but, with attention in concealing the corn, and punctuality in feeding, any waste worth notice may be prevented, and by observing how many birds come up to their food, it is easy to discover when anything is going wrong, as the least disturbance will make pheasants shy, and will be enough to put the keeper on the alert to discover the cause." When fed by hand in this manner, a great variety of food may be used. Maize is certainly one of the best ; weight for weight it is usually much cheaper than barley, is better relished by the pheasants, is far more fattening, and it possesses the great recommendation of not being so readily devoured by the sparrows, especially if the large coarse and cheaper varieties are purchased. A correspondent, who has kept pheasants for many years, and taken much trouble to- ascertain their preference for different kinds of food, states, as the result of his experience, that ee they prefer maize or Indian corn to any other food that can be given to them. I have frequently given the pheasants that come regularly to my window to be fed equal parts of Indian corn, peas, small horse-beans, wheat, barley, and oats, and they invariably take them in the order in which I have written them. I have also frequently done the same with those I keep shut up for laying, and always with the same results. Pheasants that I have had from elsewhere to put with them in confinement, and that have never seen maize, take to it in a couple of days, FEEDING IN COVERTS. 53 and then, like the others, will eat nothing else so long as they can get it ; and if I try them with the mixture above named I find all the other grain neglected. The young pheasants at the coops begin to eat it before they are as large as partridges, and then entirely neglect the barley, &c. I never see pheasants that are kept up in better condition than my own, and they have nothing but Indian corn, a few turnip leaves, and clods of turf to pull to pieces. Another great advantage of maize is that small birds cannot steal it, with the exception of the tomtit, and though almost the smallest he holds the corn with one foot and hammers away like a miniature woodpecker, commencing at the part of the grain that is attached to the stalk, finding that the only road in. It is but a very small part of each corn that he is able to eat, but it seems to possess great attraction for him. There are six or eight of these little birds live constantly near my house at this season; and though chaffinches, blackbirds, and thrushes all try their best at the maize, they soon give it up hopelessly. Rooks take it greedily, and were it not for an occasional ball from the air gun they would rob the pheasants of every grain." In feeding pheasants in this manner, care should be taken to change the ground frequently, for if they are fed on the same place for a continuance the ground becomes tainted, the food is necessarily soiled by the excrements of the birds, and disease is the invariable result. Feeding troughs, which open with the weight of the pheasant when standing on an attached bar in front of the corn, are not extensively used. The objections to them are, in the first place, their expense, some fifteen shillings to thirty shillings each, which becomes a serious item when many are required ; their liability to get out of order ; and, lastly, the unlimited supply they afford to the feeding bird, which crams itself to repletion without any exercise, and is disinclined to seek food on its own account. Unquestionably, the best mode of feeding pheasants is by 54 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. the use of small stacks of imthreshed grain or beans; but even this may be done in a wrong as well as a right manner. The late Mr. W. Lort, an enthusiastic practical sportsman, made the following suggestions: "Pheasants may be easily fed from small thatched stacks made with bundles of different kinds of grain. The only operation then required pulling a bundle or two from the stack and cutting the bands may be performed every two or three days ; though, by the way, I must say I like someone to see my pheasants every day ; and those who want game will find it to their interest to have it well attended to. If weight and bulk are objects, a foot or two of the straw can be cut from each sheaf or bundle of corn before it is taken to the stacks. The ears should be put inside, or half the corn will be taken by small birds ; and the bottom of the stack should stand at least a foot from the ground. I use as food in winter peas, beans, barley, buck- wheat, wheat, and a few oats, and many other little delicacies, such as boiled potatoes, ground artichokes, decayed apples, damaged raisins, &c. ; and, with all these dainties, they will stray twice in the year when the acorns fall, and at or just before breeding-time." The following most complete series of suggestions on feeding pheasants in coverts is from the pen of Mr. James Barnes, of Exmouth. It is specially valuable as giving practical directions for the formation of catchpools for water, without which no amount of feeding will keep pheasants from straying in dry weather ; and it also contains suggestions for the formation of huts, which are worthy of the careful con- sideration of every preserver on a large scale. Mr. Barnes writes : " Pheasants are well-known to require assistance with food of some kind in winter to keep them in good condition, and to have a propensity to ramble away and expose themselves to the depredations of trespassers. Buck- wheat should be sown adjacent to their coverts, cut when ripe and intermixed with barley, also in straw, and placed in little stacks in or near their coverts, and spread or shaken FEEDING IN COVERTS. 55 about at intervals throughout the winter. What is still better to my mind, is to place their food in huts. A pheasant hut is an open shed, with the roof fixed on four posts, with a pole all round for rafter plate, the rafters of rough poles tied on with withies, thatched first with long faggots tied up with three or four withies of brushwood with all the leaves on, and allowed to hang down or over the rafter plate two feet or thereabouts. The thatch used should be small brushwood, reeds, or straw. An open trellis floor of poles should be raised two feet from the ground, and on this the corn in straw should be laid for the pheasants to help themselves. In these huts the pheasants find shelter, comfort, and cover in rough, wintry, and severe weather. Care should be taken to have plenty of dry dust on the floor underneath for the pheasants to bask in. This is a most essential provision quite as much so for pheasants as for our poultry for it is quite as natural for them to dust to clean themselves. It is a fact within easy observation how the pheasant searches out the base of an old dry, dusty pollard tree or hedge bank to bask in the dust. Besides, every grain of corn that falls through the open feeding floor is searched for and found in this dust. Underneath and on the dusty floor is a safe and convenient place, sheltered from severe frost, &c., to receive any other kind of food, such as refuse potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, mangolds, swede turnips, cabbage, Spanish chesnuts, acorns,- beechnuts, a few raisins, Indian corn, or anything else you wish the pheasants to have. Such changes of food cast about their feeding sheds are sure to secure them keeping pretty well to covert, particularly if they have water at hand. I have seen large expenditures for well digging or for the conveyance of water by ram and pipes from some stream at a distance; but the best and simplest plan to keep up a general supply of water for the season the pheasant is in covert, is certainly the shallow catch- pool system. In my humble opinion, it is the most 56 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. natural, convenient, and inexpensive plan of all I have seen or had anything to do with in my time. I will explain what I mean by catchpools : Choose any little slope or valley in high and dry coverts where some command may be had of the surrounding surface water after rain ; scoop out a hole in the earth's surface in the shape of a spoon or bowl, sloping gradually all round to the centre and deepest part, which need not be deeper than from eighteen inches to three feet, according to width and length; the edges, to admit the water running into it freely, must be kept a little under the earth's natural surface. Then puddle the whole of its face with six inches of well- wrought clay, paving it with bricks laid flat, and giving it all over a little coat of Portland cement. Thus you have a first-class and lasting catchpit to hold water most of the year, indeed, the whole season. Pheasants are expected to remain in covert for food and safety from September to February, and then there is certainly always plenty of water. After February the pheasant likes to go further away, and, soon after the gun is withdrawn, is pretty sure to get distributed about in search of insects and various roots. Pheasants rove about quietly during their breeding season, but little is seen or heard of them after April till corn harvest, as they live a quiet, secluded life through summer. I have made catchpools by casing them only with puddled clay. One disadvantage of this is, in a long dry time the water gets low, and the clay sides becoming exposed, contract, crack, and allow the water to run to waste if they are not looked to when rain does come. There is also another way in which I have had catch- pools made where natural gravel abounds, namely, to make it into concrete and case the bottom and sides with this only. It answers well, and saves the labour and expense of getting bricks from a distance. Every feeder knows that dry barley and buckwheat in sheaf, and stacked in the vicinity of the preserves, and some pulled out and shaken about occasionally, with a change of maize, will keep the pheasants in good FEEDING IN COVERTS. 57 condition; but it does not occur to everyone that a good supply of water near their feeding ground has a considerable influence on their habits. After feeding heartily on dry food, they will stray for water if there be none handy, and will stay away afterwards till hungry again, thus running the risk of being shot during their wanderings. To keep pheasants in their own coverts, take means of making them fond of them, even though there be no water near I have found Jerusalem artichokes the best means of attraction. They are so fond of these tubers that they will hunt them by sight or smell from any obscure corner. Give them also potatoes (small and large), mangold wurtzel, carrots, white- hearted cabbage, and savoys, all of which they will readily eat, and which not only prevent their straying for water, but afford a change of food that is genial and natural to their taste and well-doing, besides economising their dry corn food. Where the coverts abound with acorns, beechmast, Spanish chesnuts, and groundnuts, the pheasant requires but little feeding till the middle of December." The planting of Jerusalem artichokes on waste spots and coverts will be found to be an exceeding advantageous mode of feeding pheasants and preventing their straying from their own coverts. When once established, these plants readily reproduce themselves and afford a continual amount of food to the birds. For preventing pheasants straying, the use of raisins scattered in the coverts is particularly advantageous. They will attract birds even from distant coverts to so great an extent that the owners of these latter may have to employ them in their own defence. So attractive are raisins to pheasants that the birds are not unfrequently captured by poachers by means of a fish hook baited with a raisin and suspended about the height of a running bird's head from the ground. CHAPTEE Y. MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES (CONTINUED). BEARING AND PROTECTION. ITH regard to the rearing of pheasants in preserves but little need be said; the less they are interfered with the better. No good can possibly come from disturbing the sitting hens, but, on the other hand, a great amount of mischief may accrue. When leaving the nest quietly in order to seek food, the hen does so such a manner as not to attract the attention of the numerous enemies, as crows, magpies, jays, &c., that are on the watch to discover and devour her eggs ; but driven off by the prying intrusion of a visitor, she departs without caution, and makes known the situation of her concealed nest. The only circumstance warranting any interference with the nests of the wild birds is the occurrence of a greater number of eggs than the parent hen is capable of rearing as young birds, should the whole of them be hatched. A hen pheasant is rarely seen with more than six or seven young, at least when they have arrived at any size ; and as she not unfrequently lays a larger number of eggs, it is an advan- tageous plan to remove all beyond eight or nine for the purpose of hatching them under common farmyard hens. Mr. J. Baily, in his " Pheasants and Pheasantries/' says that if "a keeper knows of forty nests, seven eggs may PROPORTION OF SEXES IN COVERTS. 59 be safely spared from each. ; this will give two hundred and eighty eggs for tame rearing " ; but such a degree of prolificacy in wild pheasants is a higher average than has ever come under my notice. Another point of very considerable importance with regard to the breeding of pheasants in preserves is the number of cocks that should be left in the spring in proportion to the number of hens. There is no doubt whatever that in a state of nature pheasants are polygamous, the stronger males driving away the weaker, and taking possession of several hens to constitute their seraglios ; hence the custom to shoot down most of the cocks, and leave all the hens, even the oldest, to breed. It is probable that this procedure is frequently carried too far, and in confirmation of this view I have much pleasure in quoting Mr. J. D. Dougall, who, in his " Shooting Simplified," says : " It is customary to shoot cock pheasants only, and to impose a fine upon the sportsmen who break this rule, the money being escheated to the head keeper, or applied to defray the expenses of a dinner at the end of the season, when shootings are rented by a party of gentlemen. This rule is very frequently overstretched. It should not be forgotten that the desired end may be frustrated by having too many hens, as well as by having too few, and in whatever way the disproportion of sexes is caused, the result reduction in increase is the same. If the cocks are continually killed down, few male birds will arrive at that complete maturity so essential to producing a healthy stock. On the other hand, if the hens are continually spared, they will not only grow out of proportion to the number of cocks, but the aged hens will beat off the two and three year old birds. Very old hens should certainly, be destroyed. The most prolific are the two and three year old birds." A correspondent who supports this view writes : "It is very certain that in many instances too few cocks are frequently left in preserved coverts at the end of the season ; 60 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. it is also notorious that in the neighbourhood of many preserves a nide of above fourteen birds (and I have known eighteen) is not unfrequently produced from an outlying cock and hen occupying some detached covert, and yields the best birds of the season when the 1st of October arrives. With respect to the proportion of cocks to be left much may be written about it, depending upon all circumstances con- nected with the ground under the entire control of the individual seeking to preserve a given stock of pheasants. In all cases, in my opinion, too much forbearance is shown to hens early in the season, and much too little towards cocks at the end. The safe plan, in all cases, is to adapt one or two small coverts, as much in the centre of your ground as possible, as your feeding places for your stock birds, and before the middle of December the exact number of birds which by judicious management you have collected there may be ascertained by a few days' careful observation. With attention and the greatest forbearance towards these (no old cocks being left among their number), you may kill freely elsewhere, and insure to your friends and yourself plenty of sport the following season from them and their progeny." With regard to the exact proportion of sexes left in the coverts, it is difficult to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. One writer states : " It would be to the advantage of preservers of pheasants if they would, before it is too late, refrain from shooting the cock birds too close, as most game preservers, I presume, wish to have as good and numerous a stock of pheasants as they can for breeding ; and the reason why so many are disappointed in this respect is for want of more cock birds. There should be left at least one cock for every three hens, as eggs then would be more plentiful, the chicks stronger, and better able to contend with a wet season and the numerous enemies they have to battle with/' The frequent occurrence of old barren hens that have assumed either wholly or in part the plumage of the male is PROTECTION FROM ENEMIES. 61 a proof, if one were wanting, that in many coverts the old worn out hens are left longer than is desirable or profitable. The chapters on the Management of Pheasants in Preserves would be very incomplete without the consideration of the best means of protecting them against their numerous enemies. The chief four-footed depredators are cats, foxes, hedgehogs, and polecats. Their other enemies are feathered and unfeathered. Amongst the former may be included crows, magpies, and jays, which are great destroyers of eggs. But the unfeathered bipeds, known as poachers, are perhaps the most destructive. By far the greater number of pheasants purloined by the poacher are shot at night ; this destruction may be prevented in great part, without the necessity for night watching, by having suitable coverts, as has been already fully explained in the preceding chapter. Where larches and other trees with exposed horizontal branches abound, recourse should be had to mock pheasants, which are excessively annoying to poachers, as they cause them to expend ammunition uselessly and alarm the neigh- bouring keepers, without any profitable result. Mock pheasants, quite incapable of being distinguished from the real birds at night, may be made of hay bands, rushes, or fern, bound with tarred twine or wire on a stick about two feet long. Capt. Darwin, in his " Game Preserver's Manual," writing of mock pheasants, states "they are very easily made, but their situations should be often varied. Some keepers make them of board cut into the shape of a pheasant. These are of little use, for a poacher gets under them and sees at once what they are. Others make the body of wood, roughly turned in a lathe, and nail a strip of wood on it for a tail, or with real tail feathers stuck in. The best mode of making mock pheasants after all is as follows : Get a bunch of long hay and roll it round a stick till it is the size of a pheasant's body, leaving enough for a tail ; wrap it with thin copper wire down to the end of the tail ; cut a peg about six inches long and as thick as a lead-pencil ; wind a bit of hay 62 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. round the end to make a head, and run the peg into the body. Tie these imitations on the branches of larch trees here and there. Pheasants prefer this kind of tree to others, in con- sequence of the boughs coming out straight, and so allowing them a flat surface to sit on. In woods where there are no foxes, and where the ground vermin has been well killed down, it is a good plan (especially if you think it a likely night for poachers) to unroost the pheasants in the evening. They will not fly up again that night. If you begin by unroosting the pheasants when they are young, and have only flown up a few nights, they will take to roosting on the ground altogether, and never fly up at all. Pheasants that have not been accustomed to be driven down at all are made rather shy by the frequent repetition of this performance, and it may drive them away. They are very easily frightened. If you begin shooting rabbits, &c., they will take the alarm. They can't stand guns going off constantly in the coverts where they are." Imitation pheasants thus made will only last a single season ; should anything more permanent be desired, recourse must be had to those made of wood, which may be cheaply and efficiently constructed on the following plan, the sugges- tion of a- correspondent, who states : " Six years since I had V^^T >\ r~+~^~ XN^ W , WlM^fTUV;;!',}* a number of wooden ones made and set up, and hundreds remain to this day. The manufacture was simple. Take a fir pole, saw it through at an angle of 45 ; this cut, when rounded off, forms the breast of the bird ; a cut at 22J forms the tail-end. So, by making alternate cuts at 45 and 22 J, you may cut up the pole without waste, as shown in the plan sent herewith. A lath cut through in like manner at a very acute angle forms a capital tail, which should be put on, but nearer the perpendicular than shown ,in the engraving, as pheasants roost with the tail hanging nearly straight down, MOCK PHEASANTS. 63 the head is easily made out of the upper end of the pole, where too small for the body. Daub over with some oil paint (burnt umber), bore a hole through the body for the nail, and nail on the tree with a chisel- ended nail, that you may not split the branch. What the cost is you may judge, as a 12ft. pole costs fourpence, or less. Place them pretty thick where pheasants roost. By boring a hole lin. diameter from the underneath to within half an inch of the back, they will, if placed on a nail, move with the wind. My experience of them is that the deception is perfect enough, as they are difficult to distinguish from a pheasant, even in daylight. Whatever kind of mock pheasant is employed, they should not be placed too near public roads or footpaths, and in those cases in which they are liable to observation during the day, they should be moved frequently." Alarm guns set in coverts with wires leading in different directions are most valuable as alarming poachers, and indicating the locality in which they are pursuing their depredations. One of the best, and certainly the cheapest, alarm guns with which I am acquainted, is that devised by Captain Darwin, and described in his useful manual on Game Preserving, which has been too long out of print. The author writes: "I have constructed an alarm gun which combines the desiderata of cheapness and simplicity more completely than any I have yet seen. I do not lay claim to the invention of this gun, but I certainly find I can adopt materials in its construction that will come to a tenth part of the money usually charged ; in fact, any tolerable mechanic 64 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. ought to make it in an hour. It is formed as follows : get a piece of iron gas -pipe, three inches long and three-quarters bore. At the threaded end make a plug of iron a quarter of an inch thick, and tapped in the centre for a nipple. Drive this plug into the barrel, and braze it. The nipple is then screwed in. Then get a corresponding piece of the gas-pipe, from two feet six inches to three feet long, also threaded at the end. Screw the collar (that always goes along with this sort of gas-pipe) on to the long piece as tight as it will go. The gun is now complete with the exception of the hammer, which is a piece of round iron about a foot long, and slipping easily down the barrel. To set the gun you must tie the long barrel fast to the stem of a tree in the plantation, with the short barrel downwards. Unscrew the latter and load it with a couple of charges of powder, and put on the cap, which you should cover with some beeswax and suet mixed. Then screw the short barrel into the long one. Drill a small hole through the loose piece of iron about four inches from one end, and put it in the barrel with a nail or peg in the small hole, and a string from the nail going down the side of the tree in the direction you may choose. Mind and not have the wire so low that a dog can let it off. When the wire is touched it draws the nail, and the hammer, falling down on the barrel, lets the cap off. Being fastened up in a tree, and close to the stem, it can catch the eye of no one, and merely has to be shifted occasionally, though of course there is no need to do- this until after it has been fired. After all, nothing daunts poachers so much as pit-falls made in the woods. They should be about seven feet deep, and made with the sides slanting, so that the chamber is larger at the bottom than at the top. Unless boarded all round, the soil will fall in. Tha opening should be four feet square, and be covered with sticks and sods, or anything resembling the surrounding ground. Poachers are very shy of venturing into woods where you have these pit-falls." Alarm guns discharging wooden or other plugs upwards ROOKS IN PHEASANT COVERTS. 65 or horizontally should never be used, as danger to human life always accompanies their employment. It is almost unnecessary to remark that alarm guns of various forms can be purchased at any gunmakers. The destruction effected in preserves during the nesting season by crows, jackdaws, magpies, jays, and other egg- eating birds, is well known, and can only be remedied by the trapping or shooting of the culprits. The question as to the influence of the rook in pheasant coverts is one of those respecting which there is much to be said on both sides. The rook is so very valuable an ally to the agriculturist, by destroying an enormous number of grubs, wire worms, &c., that its case claims our most attentive consideration. In reply to the accusation that rooks occasionally destroy the eggs of the pheasant, Mr. James Barnes writes : " According to my own observations of above fifty years, the rook will eat eggs if placed about in open country pastures, &c., but I believe never goes on foraging excursions for eggs or young game, as the carrion crow does. Rooks will not only knock eggs to pieces openly placed in sight of their feeding grounds, but they will also, in hard frosty weather, devour many other things, such as slaughter-house garbage, or dead poultry, game, or fish that may lie about decomposing within their reach. My own observation is, that the rook is a real friend to the pheasant, and provides it with a deal of food at an acceptable season. In the years 1816 and J 817, I went with others to see the young rooks shot in Lord Middleton's park, Peper Harrow, Godalmiiig, Surrey. The trees were high in an inclosure, but not at that time very thick on the ground, for there was some scrubby undergrowth and a rare crop of rank weeds the open spaces were splashed as if whitewashed, as the under- growth of all rookeries is during the first two or three weeks of May. Amongst this undergrowth there were two or three pheasants' nests, protected with boughs; and strict orders were given that no one should disturb the pheasants 5 nests. I thought but little of this at the time; but afterwards I 66 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. observed that where pheasants were preserved near a rookery, pheasants were to be seen there through March, April, and May. I did not observe the real cause of their foraging and running about the rookeries till about 1844, when I saw a cock pheasant pick up a piece of potato on a gravel walk, and run away with it into t\e shrubbery, and remembered that I had often seen pieces of potato lying about, and had seen the rooks drop them and their pellets likewise. The latter were frequently full of half-digested grains, as if dropped through fright. I had seen from the middle of February to the middle of May bushels of pellets underneath the trees scratched over by the pheasants of course for the food to be found therein ; and there were always pheasants' nests close at hand, eveu in or under the rookery. Where the potato is much cultivated, as in South Devon, a good many small potatoes would be turned up in ploughing the land, which the rook and jackdaw seemed to claim as their perquisites and carry off home. I have seen five or six fall of a morning on walking under the trees, but the birds never came down to pick one up. I have seen fall large brown grubs, the fern beetle, whole ears and loose grains of corn, pellets or quids half chewed or sucked over, and have seen the pheasants run and pick them up. There is fine living in variety for pheasants under a rookery, pro- vided neither party is disturbed by strangers. Respecting the rooks' pellets, from the middle of February to the middle of March, in a corn-growing district, while the spring corn is sowing the rook hurries over the new-sown land, and picks up all stray grains that comes under his observation, as well as worms, grubs, slugs, bits of potatoes, pieces of half -decayed scales of oyster shells, little pieces of lime, sand, and gravel all together hoarded under the lower mandible, which looks like a big full pouch as he arrives home to his mate in charge of the nest. Here his load is delivered to the mate, who, with great ado, chews it over, and ejects the pellet or quid in due course. This business is continued till late at night. Many times, passing under the trees at various hours, from 10 p.m. BOOKS IX PHEASANT COVERTS. 67 till 3 a.m., I have heard the pellet drop, and have had them fall on my head and shoulders, and picked them up by the light of the moon or lantern. The rook^s excreta are at this time pretty solid. As the month of March is nearly ended this alters; and in April, when the corn is sprouted and growing, the ejecta are like sloppy mud, and contain the husks of a few grains of corn, wings of beetles, pieces of snail shells, lime, and grit. From this time till June no pellets or quids are to be seen ; the droppings are loose, and like whitewash over the vegetation underneath. Insect food _ - so various and abundant that they and their broods seem to entirely subsist on it for six or eight weeks, and the young thrive and grow fat wonderfully quick in showery, growing weather of April and beginning of May. The young that are spared from the gunners, as soon as they can fly, are enticed away early in the morning by their parents, at first by short flights, to the fields then preparing for turnip sowing, or the pasture that produces cockchafers, fern beetles, and other insects, and for a few nights roost on trees near their work. After they get strong on the win or, and good flyers, they all come back to their native home, the rookery. As soon as a field of early podded peas is pretty full, the rook, if not looked after, will take toll ; also of wheat or barley they will certainly, if an opportunity is afforded them, filch a portion, particularly such as is near trees or has been laid by wind or wet. Then, again, commences the real pellet-ejecting season. The rook then hurries to the unguarded field to filch corn, which he stores in his pouch as quickly as possible, picking up also on the pasture and turnip fields, &c., quantities of grubs, snails, slugs, beetles, earwigs, grass- hoppers, crickets, fern flies, various other insects, and their Iarva3. It is truly astonishing to see, as I have done for years, on examining those ejected pellets, what variety at times they contain besides remains of every kind of creeping, running, or flying insect that may chance to come in their way, in the season of ripening of seeds on the pastures a 68 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. number of grass and weed seeds, the husk of corn wheat and barley many kinds of weed and coarse grass seeds. After harvest and gleaning season is over, no more pellets are to be seen. In the wheat-sowing season they filch some loose grains and dig out the young plants, and, through its being wet at this season, and collected with much dirt, the food is ejected in a loose manner like mud. However, in all my long experience, I never saw under the trees an eggshell of any game, poultry, or other birds, except the shells of their own which had been hatched out, or tumbled out by stormy winds. I have, however, yearly seen a pair of carrion crows attend to the early rooks' nest, and carry off the new-laid eggs, as they did also with pheasants 7 eggs, the shells of which I have found lying about by scores. It is a curious fact that, numerous as the rooks are, they are such cowards as to allow the crow to rob them, and only fly round and round, cawing, while the robbery is going on." I have known many cases where pheasants have sat, and reared their young safely almost immediately under a rookery. On the other hand, there is no doubt but that in seasons of scarcity, when very hard pressed for food, rooks will destroy pheasants' eggs. Colonel J. Whyte, Newtown Manor, Sligo, in reply to Mr. Barnes, writes as follows : " There appears some doubt whether rooks suck pheasants' eggs, or whether the carrion crow is not the real depredator. Perhaps what follows may set the question at rest. About four years since, Lord Clonbrock asked me if I had ever known rooks eat the eggs of pheasants. My idea was that they might do so occasionally, but not as a custom. His lordship replied: ' The rooks about me have within the last year or two taken to hunt up and destroy the eggs as regularly as if they were so many magpies. I did not believe my keeper at first, but, going" my self to look out, I saw them regularly beating up and down a piece of rough ground where the pheasants nest, and when they found one they would rise up a few yards in the air and then pounce ROOKS IN PHEASANT COVERTS. 69 down on it/ Lord Dunsandle's place is within fifteen or sixteen miles of Lord Clonbrock ; there are three rookeries in it, and the first question I asked the keeper on my arrival there to shoot was, ' Do the rooks suck or damage the pheasants' eggs ? ' The answer was, ' No ; ' nor did they do so till this year. But about a week ago I received from Lord Dunsandle a letter, in which he said, ' This year the rooks have taken to destroying my pheasants' eggs, and the mischief they have done is incredible ; the fields are strewn with broken eggs/ It would therefore appear that not only do rooks destroy eggs, but that they take to it in a sudden and unaccountable manner. There can be no question here about the work being done by carrion crows, for the only carrion crow in Ireland is the Eoyston or hooded crow.* The reason that Mr. Barnes had no shells under the trees in the rookery is, that the rook breaks and eats the eggs on the spot. Jackdaws will eat eggs whenever they can find them, and my keeper assures me that a short time since he saw one take a little rabbit up in his claws several yards, and then drop it on his approach. This colony of jackdaws is situated in some high cliffs, and is increasing in numbers every year/' Mr. Leno, a very extensive pheasant breeder, states the case still more forcibly : t( My experience is, that rooks will destroy pheasants' eggs whenever they happen to find them out. In one week a rook came twice and settled down in my pheasantry, and took an egg away each time : and where rooks abound, if perchance a pheasant's or partridge's nest is left by the mowers, the rooks may be seen crowding around the patch of grass left for shelter, and the eggs are finished in quick time. It is useless to leave a nest exposed in the neighbourhood of rooks, as they are sure to eat them." Mr. Harman, of Kiverstown, co. Sligo, writes : " I am unwilling to bring in a case against that useful bird the rook, * It is now ascertained that the Carrion and the Royston crows are merely varieties of one and the same species, and that they breed together with great freedom. Both varieties occur in Ireland. 70 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. but I can confirm the destruction of pheasants 5 eggs. A few years ago, in a dry spring, with a north-east wind for many weeks, when the rooks could not bore for their accustomed food, about one hundred and fifty pheasants' eggs i.e., the shells were found under the rookery near the house, having been taken by the rooks to feed their young, other food failing them. I have caught them when baiting traps with eggs for magpies ; but still I consider the rook (barring these serious misdemeanours) a most useful bird/' Mr. J. E. Harting informs me that on one occasion, in the month of April, about the 14th or 15th, he saw a rook in the act of carrying off a pheasant's egg from a copse. The bird was carrying the egg upon the point of the bill, and on being fired at he dropped it, and when picked up it was found to be empty, although still wet inside. There was a large and irregularly shaped hole towards the larger end. On the very ground where this occurred, my informant had heard the keeper say that he had on more than one occasion shot rooks in the act of carrying off pheasants' eggs. The balance of the evidence for and against the rook in respect of its conduct regarding the eggs of pheasants, appears to show that, saving in seasons of an exceptional character, or in cases where the eggs are left exposed by mowing, the influence of the bird is not seriously antagonistic to the rearing of pheasants ; but when hard pressed for food, rooks will even destroy the young birds. A correspondent writes as follows : " On June 13 my keeper observed about half a dozen rooks engaged amongst the coops of young pheasants, and, suspecting their object, drove them off. The next morning, having fed and watered the young birds, he went to his cottage, and, looking out about six o'clock, saw a strong detachment of rooks from a neighbouring colony in great excitement amongst the coops. He ran down, a distance of two hundred yards, as fast as possible, but before he arrived they had succeeded in killing, and for the most part carrying off, from forty to fifty birds, two or three weeks MOORHENS AND PHEASANTS. 71 old. As lie came amongst them they flew up in all directions, their beaks full of the spoil. The dead birds not carried away had all of their heads pulled off, and most of their legs and wings torn from the body. I have long known that rooks destroy partridges' nests and eat the eggs when short of other food, but have never known a raid of this descrip- tion. I attribute it to the excessive drought, which has so starved the birds by depriving them of their natural insect food that they are driven to depredation. It will be necessary to be on guard for some time ; bad habits once acquired (as with man-eating tigers) may last even more than one season. Probably the half-dozen rooks first seen amongst the coops tasted two or three, and, finding them eatable, brought their friends in numbers the next morning." The Moorhen, Waterhen, or common Gallinule, is occasionally destructive to young pheasants. Mr. Grould recounted the evidence in " The Birds of Great Britain," and Mr. H. J. Partridge, of Hockham Hall, Thetford, writing to the Zoologist, stated that " At the beginning of July, the keeper having lost several pheasants about three weeks old from a copse, and having set traps in vain for winged and four-footed vermin, determined to keep watch for the aggressor, when, after some time, a Moorhen was seen walking about near the copse ; the keeper, supposing it only came to eat the young pheasants' food, did not shoot it, until he saw the Moorhen strike a young pheasant, which it killed immediately, and devoured, except the leg and wing bones. The remains agreed exactly with eight found before." Lord Lilford, writing in " Dresser's Birds of Europe/' says : " I look upon the Waterhen as an enemy to the game- preserver, not only from the quantity of pheasant food which it devours, but from the fact that it will attack, kill, and eat young birds of all sorts. The bird is a great favourite of mine, and I should be sorry to encourage its destruction, but I am persuaded that it is a dangerous neighbour to young game birds"; and in his "Birds of Northamptonshire/' he 72 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. adds, "We caniiot acquit them of the charge of a very pugnacious and destructive tendency amongst their own and other species of birds, and they are most certainly bad neigh- bours for young pheasants and partridges, as they not only consume a good deal of the food intended for game birds, but will now and then capture and devour the birds themselves." The common Kestrel, or Windhover, so well known as a destroyer of field mice and rats, has also been accused of attacking young pheasants. Mr. J. H. Gurney, of Northrepps, one of the highest authorities on accipitrine birds, writes as follows : " Mr. Stevenson, in his article on the Kestrel in the 'Birds of Norfolk/ remarks: 'That some kestrels carry off young partridges as well as other small birds during the nesting season, is too well authenticated as a fact for even their warmest advocates to gainsay. 3 For many years I have endeavoured to collect reliable information on this point, and I am convinced of the correctness of Mr. Stevenson's opinion above quoted ; but there is this difference between the sparrowhawk and the kestrel in their habits of preying on young partridges and pheasants viz., that the kestrel only destroys them when very young, and the sparrowhawk continues to attack them long after they have grown too large to be prey for the kestrel. To particularise two instances : Many years ago, a very young partridge was brought to me which had been taken out of a kestrel's nest at Easton, in Norfolk ; and a gamekeeper in this parish, who is as trust- worthy an observer of such matters as any man I know, saw a hen kestrel take up a very young pheasant in its talons and rise with it about eight feet from the ground ; my informant then fired at the depredator with a small pistol, when it dropped its prey, which, though somewhat injured, ultimately recovered ; and an instance of a young pheasant found in the nest of a kestrel was recorded in The Field of May 13, 1868." Mr. Booth, in his {( Rough Notes/ 7 has carefully investi- gated the accusations against the kestrel, and he maintains PHEASANTS SCENTLESS WHEN SITTING. 73 that it is one of our most useful birds, and a decided ally to the game preserver, more especially as a destroyer of rats, of which it kills large numbers. He says he has never known the kestrel to carry off young broods of either pheasants or partridges, but that the damage done by the sparrowhawk is often attributed to the Kestrel. The pheasant, from nesting on the ground, is peculiarly exposed to the attacks of four-footed or ground vermin, and the escape of any of the sitting birds and their eggs from foxes, polecats, hedgehogs, &c., appears at first sight almost impossible. This escape is attributed by many, possibly by the majority, of sportsmen to the alleged fact that in the birds when sitting the scent which is given out by the animal at other times is suppressed ; in proof of this statement is adduced the fact that dogs, even those of the keenest powers of smell, will pass within a few feet, or even a less distance, of a sitting pheasant without evincing the slightest cognizance of her proximity provided she is concealed from sight. By others this circumstance is denied, they reason cu priori that it is impossible for an animal to suppress the secretions and exhalations natural to it secretion not being a voluntary act. I believe, however, that the peculiar specific odour of the bird is suppressed during incubation, not, however, as a voluntary act, but in a manner which is capable of being accounted for physiologically. The suppression of the scent during incuba- tion is necessary to the safety of the birds, and essential to the continuance of the species. I believe this suppression is due to what may be termed vicarious secretion. In other words, the odoriferous particles which are usually exhaled by the skin are, during such time as the bird is sitting, excreted into the intestinal canal, most probably into the ca3cum or the cloaca. The proof of this is accessible to every one ; the excrement of a common fowl or pheasant, when the bird is not sitting, has, when first discharged, no odour akin to the smell of the bird itself. On the other hand, the excrement of a sitting hen has a most remarkable odour of the fowl, 74 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. but highly intensified. We are all acquainted with this smell as increased by heat during roasting ; and practical poultry keepers must have remarked that the excrement discharged by a hen on leaving the nest has an odour totally unlike that discharged at any other time, involuntarily recalling the smell of a roasted fowl, highly and disagreeably intensified. I believe the explanation of the whole matter to be as follows : the suppression of the natural scent is essential to the safety of the bird during incubation ; that at such time vicarious secretion of the odoriferous particles takes place into the intestinal canal, so that the bird becomes scentless, and in this manner her safety and that of her eggs is secured. This explanation would probably apply equally to partridges and other birds nesting on the ground. The absence of scent in the sitting pheasant is most probably the explanation of the fact that foxes and pheasants are capable of being reared in the same preserves ; at the same time the keepers are usually desirous of making assurance doubly sure, by scaring the foxes from the neighbourhood of the nests by some strong and offensive substance. A very practical gamekeeper writes as follows : " If any keeper will find his nests and sprinkle a little gas tar anywhere about them, he will find the foxes will not take the birds. I should, as a keeper, find every nest possible, and dress the bushes, stumps of trees, &c., near the place of such nest, and then keep away entirely till I thought the bird had hatched, as constantly haunting a bird's nest is the most foolish thing that can be. When such nests are once found and dressed, let the keeper look out and trap all kinds of vermin, such as the cat, stoat, fitch et, weasel, hedgehog, or rat, or magpie, jay, hawk, crow, rook, or jackdaw. These are all enemies to the birds, as well as the fox. I am satisfied, as a gamekeeper, that with good vermin trapping, dressing near the nests, and good bushing and pegging of land, anyone will have plenty of game, and may still keep plenty of foxes/' Another equally efficacious plan, the value of which has CATS IN PHEASANT COVERTS. 75 been repeatedly proved, is to fill a number of phials with the so-called " oil of animal " (also known as oil of hartshorn and Dippers oil), and suspend them uncorked to sticks about eighteen inches long, and stick two or three round each nest, about a foot from it. The smell of the oil will keep the foxes from approaching. In the vicinity of dwellings, there is no more dangerous enemy to pheasants than the common cat. Captain Darwin, in his " Game Preserver's Manual," writes as follows : " There is no species of vermin more destructive to game than the domestic cat. People not aware of her predatory habits would never for a moment suppose that the household favourite that appears to be dozing so innocently by the fire is most probably under the influence of fatigue caused by a hard night's hunting in the plantations. How different also in her manner is a cat when at home and when detected prowling after the game. In the first of the two cases she is tame and accessible to any little attentions ; in the latter she seems to know she is doing wrong, and scampers off home as hard as she can go. Luckily there is no animal more easily taken in a trap, if common care be used in setting." Laying poisoned meat is now illegal, and the sale of arsenic to private persons interdicted by statute ; nevertheless I would caution any one against the use of that drug, as the employment of it is attended with much cruelty, as it is immediately rejected by vomiting, but not before it has laid the foundation of a violent and painful inflammation of the stomach, from which the animal suffers for weeks, but rarely dies. If it is absolutely necessary to use poison for cats, a little carbonate of baryta, mixed up with the soft roe of a red herring, is the most certain and speedy that can be employed, but a good keeper should know how to keep his preserves clear of vermin without the aid of poison. Hedgehogs are undoubtedly destructive to eggs as well as to the young birds, and should be trapped in coverts in which pheasants are reared. 76 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. Among the other enemies to young pheas ants that attack them occasionally may be mentioned adders, and even tame farmyard ducks that have gained access to the coops. The following vignette shows the extraordinary manner in which wounded and malformed pheasants adapt themselves to new conditions of life. It represents most accurately the head of a ring-necked pheasant that was killed by Mr. Godwin on Lord Torrington's estate. The bird was in very fair condition, weighing 21b. 5oz., and had thirty-three beech nuts in its crop. Both mandibles had been cut off in front of the nostrils, most probably by a strong steel trap, the -tongue, however, had escaped, and protruded from the mouth. It is difficult to imagine that the bird had the power of taking up small grains, and it is not surprising that it fed mainly on beech nuts, which it could readily take into its mouth . CHAPTEE VI. MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN CONFINEMENT. FOKMATION OF PENS AND AVIAKIES. .AVING treated of pheasants as wild birds, their rearing and management in enclosed pens and aviaries have next to be considered. When pheasants are bred for turning out into the coverts, and not as merely ornamental aviary birds, the system of movable enclosures, constructed of rough hurdles, will be found far superior to any more elaborate contrivances, for, when the breeding birds are kept in the same place year after year, the ground becomes, in spite of all the care that may be bestowed on it, foul and tainted, disease breaks out even amongst the old birds, and the successful rearing of young ones is hopeless. The pens should be situated in a dry situation, sandy or chalky if possible, but any soil not retentive of wet will answer. If the surface is sloping it is to be preferred, as the rain is less likely to render the ground permanently damp. Although cold is not injurious to the mature birds, and they require no special shelter, the south side of a hill or rising ground is to be chosen in preference, as the young stock are delicate. Common wattled hurdles, made seven feet long, and set up on end, make as good pens as can be desired; they should be supported by posts or fir poles driven firmly into the ground, with a horizontal pole at the top, to which the 78 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. hurdles are bound by tarred cord, or, still better, very stout flexible binding wire, which should also be used to secure them together at top and bottom. The posts should be inside the pen, as better calculated to resist any pressure from without. The hurdles should rest on the ground without any opening below, and if they are sunk three or four inches below the surface, the pens will be more secure against dogs and foxes or any animals likely to scratch their way under. The size of these pens should be as large as convenient; for a cock and three to five hens the utmost number that should be placed together as many hurdles should be employed as will form a pen twenty-five to thirty-five feet square, the smaller containing 625 square or superficial feet of surface ; the larger, which will require less than half as many more hurdles, containing nearly double the interior space, namely, 1225 square feet. If the birds are full winged, these enclosures must be netted over at the top; for this purpose old tanned herring netting, which can be bought very cheaply, will be found much better than wire-work, as the pheasants are apt, when frightened, to fly up against the top of the enclosure, and, if it be of wire, to break their necks or seriously injure themselves. Should netting be employed, several upright poles, with cross pieces at the top, are required to be placed at equal distances to support the netting, and prevent it hanging down into the interior of the pen. A much better plan is to leave the pen quite open at the top, and to clip one of the wings of each bird, cutting off twelve or fourteen of the flight feathers close but not into the quills. When the birds cannot fly they become much tamer, are more productive, and are not so apt to injure themselves by dashing about wildly, especially if there be, as is desirable, brushwood cover or faggots in the pen, under which they can run and conceal themselves. Some persons are in the habit of pinioning the birds by cutting off the last joint of the wing, thus removing permanently the ten primary FORMATION OF PENS. 79 quills, but the plan is not to be recommended, as the pinioned birds are quite incapable of taking due care of themselves when turned out into the open, and are liable to fall a prey to ground vermin. As illustrative of the mode in which a large number of birds can be successfully kept in one locality, I will describe the arrangements which I saw at the pheasantries belonging to Mr, Leno, a very successful rearer. The birds are kept in runs enclosed by hurdles between six and seven feet high. These are formed of stout straight larch laths nailed to cross pieces of oak or other strong wood, and are fastened to stout posts securely driven into the ground. As the posts are capable of being easily withdrawn and replaced, there is no difficulty in moving the pens year after year a most important consideration for the preservation of the health of the birds. Moreover, by employing a greater or smaller number of hurdles and posts, pens of any required size may be constructed, so as to accommodate a larger or smaller number of birds. On my visit, the runs had recently been shifted on to new ground, which consisted of young hazel coppice, which had been partly cleared. The surface was covered with the dead leaves of last year's growth and with short underwood, affording ample opportunity for the birds to amuse themselves by scratching for insects and by seeking food amongst the leaves. The amount of undergrowth afforded another important advantage, that the birds, on the entrance of a stranger, could run under shelter, and so conceal themselves, instead of dashing about wildly, as they would otherwise have done. No roof or shelter of any kind was afforded them, had such been erected the birds would only have used it for roosting upon, and not for sleeping under. In each pen was a horizontal pole, supported about four feet from the ground by a post at each end. Across this was laid a number of stout branches and long faggots, forming a kind of shelter to which the birds could have recourse, and under which the hens would occasionally lay; but the 80 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. chief advantage it affords is that of a roosting-place, elevated from the ground, and so keeping the birds away from the cold damp soil during the night. The sloping arrangement of these branches is advantageous to the birds, as all of them have the flight feathers of one wing (not both) cut short; they are thus destitute of the power of flight, and consequently inclined branches, up which they can walk and down which they can descend without violence, are exceedingly useful. These runs, open as they are, afford all the shelter required, provided they are not placed on the north or east side of a hill or rising ground. Their .advantage over permanent buildings is great ; in the latter pheasants cannot be success- fully reared, as the ground becomes tainted, epidemic disease breaks out, and the ground also becomes charged with the ova of the Sclerostoma syngamus, or gapewoim, which often causes great havoc amongst the young poults. Both of these evils may be in great measure avoided by shifting the runs as frequently as may be convenient. The runs may be made of any size, so as to accommodate one cock and three or four hens, or a larger number of birds. Care must be taken not to have them too small, as the birds when closely confined, often take to pecking one another's feathers an evil which is occasionally carried on until the persecuted bird is killed. When runs are made small, the ground very rapidly becomes tainted, and the birds consequently diseased. The vigorous, healthy aspect of the numerous birds I saw at these pheasantries was evidently owing, in great part at least, to the large size of the inclosures, and the fresh ground on to which they are so frequently shifted. No nest-places are made or required ; the hens generally drop their eggs about at random, and they should be looked for and collected at least twice a day. This is most important, as, if any eggs are chipped or broken the birds may acquire the bad habit of pecking them, which is quickly acquired by all others in the run, and will be found exceedingly difficult to eradicate. The food employed is good sound barley, with a certain proportion FORMATION OF PENS. 81 of buckwheat. This is varied by soft food consisting of meal, with which, at times, a small proportion of greaves is mixed to supply the place of the animal food the pheasants would obtain in a state of nature. Acorns are occasionally employed, but the birds prefer grain. The food is strewed broadcast on the ground ; and it is needless to say that a constant supply of clean fresh water is provided for the birds. The young are hatched under common barnyard fowls, and are reared on custard, biscuit, meal, rice, and millet, with occasionally a little hempseed ants' eggs, though exceedingly advantageous, not being found in the locality. The arrangements recommended by Mr. F. Crook vary somewhat in detail from those described, but are equally practical and effective. He writes : " An order should be given to the ordinary wattled-hurdle makers to make a given quantity of six feet by six feet open hurdles, with well- pointed ends, twenty-four of these hurdles, when placed in position, will make a convenient-sized run, thirty-six feet every way ; but preparation must be made for a doorway, and for covering over the whole of the hurdles inside the run with one and a half inch wire netting round the sides, and string netting for the top. For the size run specified there must be four posts, made with four-way "[" piece tops, to carry the netting ; the posts to be placed equi- distant from each other, to properly divide off the interior centre space ; from each upright should branch out movable perches about eighteen inches long, at different heights from the ground. The next and most important point is the arrangement of nesting- places. At the most retired portion of the run faggots should be placed, in bundles of three or more, arranged conical fashion, or piled as soldiers do their arms, leaving a good space open at the bottom ; but before setting the faggots in their places, the earth must be dug out six inches deep, and filled in with dry loose sand or fine dry mould, and then place the faggots over the sand. There should be as many of these nesting-places as the space will afford, taking care that G 82 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. sufficient space is left between each to admit of easy access by the birds and their keeper." Some writers recommend pens made of eight hurdles, each six feet long, giving a square of twelve feet in each side, and having an interior space of only 144 superficial feet ; but these pens are too small for the health or comfort of the birds, that are far more apt to fall into the evil habits of egg eating and feather plucking than when confined in larger runs. With regard to the food of the old birds in the pens, the more varied it is the better. Good sound grain, such as maize, barley, buckwheat, malt, tail wheat, and oats, &c., may all be used. But maize should be used sparingly, as it is too fatten- ing for laying pheasants or hens. Mr. Baily recommends strongly an occasional feed of boiled potatoes, of which the birds are exceedingly fond. He writes : " For bringing pheasants home, or for keeping them there, we know of nothing equal to boiled potatoes. Let them be boiled with the skins whole, and in that state taken to the place where they are to be used. Before they are put down, cut out of each skin a piece the size of a shilling, showing the meal within. Place them at moderate distances from each other, and the pheasants will follow them anywhere." Eice and damaged currants and raisins are very well for an occasional change, but should be sparingly used. A few acorns may be given from time to time, but their use in excess is apt to prove injurious. Mr. J. Fairfax Muckley, of Audnam, writes on their employment as follows : " Three seasons ago I laid in a stock of acorns, and instructed the feeder to give the pheasants a few every day. They preferred them to other food. In one week I had ten dead birds. They were fat and healthy in every respect, with the exception of inflammation of the intestines. My conclusion is, that if allowed to have free access to acorns they eat more than they should, and consequently many die. Keepers frequently depend too much upon acorns." With regard to the employment of animal food, such as FEEDING IN PENS. 83 horseflesh, greaves, &c., I believe its use, except in the very smallest quantity, to be exceedingly injurious; nor do I approve of the spiced condiments so strongly recommended by the makers. The bodies of dead domestic animals can, however, be most advantageously utilized by allowing them to become thoroughly fly-blown, and then burying them under about a foot of soil in the pens, where the maggots go through the regular stages of growth, after which they work their way to the surface in order to effect their change into chrysalids. They furnish an admirable supply of insect food for the birds, and give them constant occupation and exercise in scratching in the ground. Utilized in this manner, the bodies of dead fowls, or any small domestic animals, are perfectly inoffensive, and the result is most advantageous to the birds. The employment of crushed bones, as a substitute for the varied animal substances the pheasant feeds upon when in a wild state, is highly advantageous. Mr. F. Crook writes : " We have seen many instances of game being perfectly cured of both eating their eggs and plucking each other, by the continual practice of giving a portion of well-smashed bones every day. These remarks apply more specially to the home pheasantries, in consequence of the absence of the natural shell stuff they pick up when at liberty, but we would recommend some to be thrown about the feeding grounds of the preserves, as the highly nutritious nature of the elements of smashed fresh bones conduces remarkably to keep the birds together, particularly in very wet seasons, when the condition of tho land renders it impossible for them to scratch about to the same extent." Should the aviary be situated on soil in which small stones are absent, these must be supplied ; this is most conveniently done by throwing in some fresh gravel once or twice a week. There is one point on which almost all the works treating* on the management of pheasants are lamentably deficient, namely, enforcing the absolute necessity for a constant supply of fresh green vegetable food. The tender grasses in an G 2 84 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. aviary are soon eaten, and the birds, pining for fresh vege- table diet, become irritable, feverish, and take to plucking each other's feathers. To prevent this, cabbages, turnip leaves still better, waste lettuces from the garden, when going to seed should be supplied as fast as they are eaten ; the smaller the pen th e greater the necessity for this supply. The late Dr. Jerdon, the distinguished author of " The Birds of India," when visiting the pheasantries in the Zoological Gardens, said, in his emphatic manner, " You are not giving these birds enough vegetable food. Lettuce ! Lettuce ! ! Lettuce ! ! ! " From my long experience in breeding galli- naceous birds of different species, I can fully indorse his recommendation . Should these cultivated vegetables be not readily obtained, a good supply of freshly cut turves, with abundance of young grass and plenty of clover, should be furnished daily. Instead of placing a cock and three to five hens in a pen, as recommended, some persons advocate putting cut-winged hens only in enclosures open at the top, so that they may be visited by the wild males. Of necessity, this method can only be followed in the immediate vicinity of coverts well stocked with pheasants, and even under these conditions it is not always successful, the eggs frequently not being fertilised. " It is sometimes recommended to put pheasant hens into small enclosures open at the top, so that the wild cocks might get to them. I suppose generally that plan is successful, but in my own case it has failed entirely. I had plenty of eggs, but no chickens. My keeper gathered the eggs regularly and carefully, and they were duly set under common hens ; but not one single egg came off. I know the wild cocks came close to the enclosure, but I never actually found one inside. I followed Baily's instructions implicitly; my own impression was, I must say, that the wild cocks had not visited the hens." This appears an exceptional case, and may probably be due to some local conditions. On the other hand, a second authority states : " On an OPEN PENS FOR HENS ONLY. 85 estate with which I am well acquainted, the whole of the young birds, some 400, were reared from eggs produced by hens whose mates were wild birds. The pheasantry was constructed with an open top, and the wild cock birds regularly visited it. The tameness of these birds was remark- able, and I have frequently seen six or eight cock birds walking fearlessly about within a few yards of me while inspecting the birds. As an instance of the audacity of the wild bird, I may mention that a few years ago I kept five hen pheasants and one cock pheasant in a temporary covered pheasantry, the lower part being covered up to the height of two or three feet, and the upper part being constructed of wire stretched on poles. I noticed shortly after the birds had been put in that the wire was bulged inwards in several places, and could not imagine how it had been done. On watching, however, I found a wild cock pheasant was in the habit of regularly fighting with the confined male bird by fiying up against the wire, the bird inside being by no means loth to accept the challenge. One morning, however, the wild bird was found inside, a nail having given way in one of his flights against the wire netting, being the cause of his unexpected capture. When discovered he had nearly killed the imprisoned cock bird, who was removed, and his adversary substituted. I may remark that those who have tried breeding from wild cocks will hardly, I fancy, return to the old system of keeping the cocks in confinement, as I have lound that the birds bred from wild cocks are invariably stronger, and consequently easier to rear than those bred in the ordinary way." There is no absolute necessity, however, for having recourse to the use of open pens, as the eggs of cut-winged birds, kept in. pheasant ries of sufficient size, well fed, with a good variety of fresh vegetable food, and supplied daily with fresh clear water, usually hatch quite as well as eggs gathered out of nests in the open covert. The construction of more ornamental and permanent 86 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. aviaries has now to be spoken of, but will not require much consideration. Fixed aviaries are far inferior, as regards the health of the birds, to those that are movable, therefore, if possible, they should always be constructed so as to admit of their being shifted on to new ground as often as is convenient. The great cause of the comparatively small success that attends the rearing of pheasants in our Zoological collections arises from the fact that the birds are kept on the same spot year after year, and in aviaries that are not one- fourth of the size required for the health and comfort of the birds. The plan of an ornamental aviary necessarily depends on the desires of the owner, and hardly comes within the scope of this work. Mr. Crook, who had much experience in erecting ornamental aviaries, writes as follows respecting their construction : " A neatly constructed lean-to building may be employed, facing south or south-west ; ten feet wide or long, six feet deep from back to front, and six feet high at front of the highest part of the roof ; the roof should project over the side eighteen inches to throw off the wet. The ground must be dug out under the house, and dry earth or sand be filled in. Faggots may be placed here as before directed, or slanting against the back wall; every precaution being taken to induce seclusion for the nests. For those pheasantries desired for strictly ornamental purposes the run may be made to any size agreeable to the wishes of the owner and the conveniences of the ground at command ; or of any design in character with some buildings near at hand. These ornamental aviaries may be carried out to any extent, but cannot be made to move about ; therefore the greatest attention must be paid to any minute detail in construction to ensure the health and contentedness of the inmates. When it is possible, the pens or runs should be placed where there are some low-growing shrubs, or even currant or gooseberry bushes, as they afford good sheltering places, and it is quite possible that the hens will make their laying nests at the roots of some of them, which will be a benefit to the birds." CATCHING BIRDS IN PENS. 87 When tlie birds are left full winged in wire aviaries, and are wild, it will be found very advantageous to have a cord netting stretched some inches below the wire top, as otherwise the birds are very apt to injure themselves severely when they dash upwards on being alarmed. When it is required to handle the pheasants, precautions must be employed that are not needful in the case of fowls, for their extreme timidity causes them to struggle so wildly as often to denude themselves of a great portion of their plumage, or even to break or dislocate their limbs. They are best caught by the aid of a large landing-net, with which they can be secured when driven into an angle, formed by setting a large hurdle against the side or in the corner of the pen. Mr. JBaily, in his practical little treatise, writes : " The best way of catching them is with a net made of hazel rod, seven or eight feet long, forked at top. This fork is bent round, or rather oval shaped, forming a hoop long enough to take in the bird without injuring its plumage. It is then covered with netting loose enough to allow of its being placed on the bird without pressing it down to injure it, and tight enough to prevent it from turning round in the net to the detriment of its plumage. Where many birds have to be caught, it is expedited by the adoption of an expedient I will describe ; and the plan is good, because it is always bad for the birds to be driven about, which they must be before they can be caught, if they are in a large pen. An extra hurdle should be made, to which a door should be joined on hinges. It .hould be three feet long. This should be placed by the side of one of those forming the pen, and the door being open the birds should be gently driven into it ; then the door should be closed. They may then be taken with the hand or not. A pheasant should be caught with one hand, taking at the same time a wing and thigh, the other hand should be brought into play directly to prevent its struggling, and it may then be easily and safely held in one, taking both thighs and the tips of both wings in the hand at the same 88 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. time. It takes two persons to cut the wings. They should always be held with their heads towards the person holding them." Since the first publication of this work the plans advocated in it have been very generally tested and discussed. The remarks of one of the writers contain so many useful details that I am glad to reproduce the more practical portion of his letters. " The advice offered with reference to pheasant pens or aviaries is as easy and inexpensive of adoption as it is good. By carefully following the excellent instructions fully set forth in the work upon pheasants by Mr. Tegetmeier to whom the thanks of all lovers of the bird are due I succeeded during the spring of 1875 in securing from thirty- five hens one thousand eggs. Forty birds similarly treated produced the following season 1500 ; last year forty-one hens presented us 1600 ; while this so far as it has yet passed offers promise of a still better return.