44 PROPAGATION OF WILD BIRDS 



fenced rearing-fields, which can be used alternate years, and 

 will prove a great convenience. Each should contain at 

 least half an acre. For work on a large scale with pheasants, 

 such rearing-fields are often five or six acres, or more. The 

 best land for these purposes is not wild, but arable land, 

 such as can be ploughed and seeded. The soil should be 

 light and porous, well drained. For a very few birds smaller 

 enclosures will do. Yet even for a brood or two an enclosure 

 should hardly be less than about loo feet square. The 

 fence should be 6 to 8 feet high. For quails there must be a 

 strip of ^-inch mesh wire at the bottom, and it should be 

 buried from 4 to 6 inches. This ^-inch wire should be 

 bought in rolls 18 inches high. Above this should be a 

 roll of I -inch mesh, say 3 feet high, and above this, for an 

 8-foot fence, a 4-foot width of i|-inch mesh. Quails when a 

 month old will begin to make low, short flights. The inch 

 mesh will then stop them, but they would fly through the 

 i§-inch mesh, which will check them later. A fence 4 to 5 

 feet high would be of some assistance, but foxes can leap 

 over it, and cats easily scramble up. It is seldom that a four- 

 footed enemy gets over an 8-foot fence, and this keeps the 

 birds in longer and better. Fledglings easily fly over a low 

 fence, but not readily over the 8-foot, which gives a longer 

 period of protection. With pheasants, the majority remain 

 inside, and the few that fly over try to run back, and can be 

 let in or caught. Quails are bound to fly out in time, but 

 after being let back a few times, they learn to go back and 

 forth at will, and they return for the night. 



Field System. The coops in a rearing-field should be at 

 least 40 feet from each other, the farther the better. Wal- 

 lace Evans has his 80 feet apart in the rows, and the rows 

 100 feet apart. When the grass grows up, a good wide 

 swath should be cut for each line of coops, or spots mowed 



