THE TRUE PHEASANTS: - 13 
‘wnen once well on the wing, the Pheasant’s flight is extremely 
rapid, being performed by rapid and incessant beats of the 
rounded wings, and when coming high, down wind, the pace 
at which a good “rocketer ” €an travel is almost incredible. 
During the nesting-season the hen Pheasant has numerous 
enemies to contend with, the most formidable being the 
prowling Fox, who seizes her as she sits on her nest, and the 
Rook and Crows, both Hooded and Carrion, who steal and 
suck her eggs. Acurious instance of the enormous amount of 
damage done by Crows came under my notice in May, 1893. 
With a friend, I was passing through a Scotch fir plantation 
forming part of a large estate in the north of Scotland, where 
thousands of Pheasants are annually reared and turned down. 
The plantation ran along about a hundred feet above the 
rocky sea-coast, and as we advanced along the slippery path, 
we found several sucked Pheasants’ eggs, evidently the work 
of Crows, nor had we gone far before we came suddenly upon 
a whole family of Hooded rascals, five young and two old 
birds. In the course of about a quarter of a mile, we counted 
over a hundred empty shells which had evidently been carried 
to the path and there devoured. How many more might 
have been discovered had we searched it is impossible to say, 
but we saw ample evidence of the wholesale destruction which a 
family of Crows is capable of committing among Pheasants’ 
eggs. Within two miles of this spot, to his shame be it said, 
stood a keeper’s house, where a thousand young birds were 
being reared. ‘This worthy informed us that the great heat 
and drought then prevalent was decimating his broods of 
young Pheasants, who were dying in scores from a disease 
which attacks the eyes, and from which few recover. He 
volunteered the information that he had not been over to the 
belt of fir wood ‘‘for this two months,” as there was nothing there 
to take him so far! A little more attention to the destruction 
of Hooded Crows in April might have saved a hundred or two 
of strong wild-bred birds for the sport in the fall of the year. 
