66 THE PHEASANT SUBFAMILY 



highly reprehensible pair. On the whole, though it has been stated 

 that rival females fight for mates as fiercely as the males, the evidence 

 therefor seems to need further confirmation. 



The choice of a nesting-place seems to be left to the female- 

 heather, coarse grass, bracken, gorse, or bramble thickets being 

 favourite sites, and where these cannot be found, then wide hedge- 

 rows, clover, and hay-fields have to suffice. Occasionally two or even 

 three hens will lay in the same nest, but no observations seem to have 

 been kept in such cases as to whether the three mothers share the 

 duties of incubation. Occasionally nests containing both partridge 

 and pheasant eggs are found, the brooding bird being sometimes the 

 pheasant, but more often the partridge ; and it is believed in such 

 cases that the smaller bird has established sole possession by right of 

 force, for the pheasant is proverbially an indifferent mother, and 

 would doubtless soon give way if repeatedly attacked even by a rival 

 so much her inferior in size. But be this as it may, the arduous work 

 of incubation is apparently undertaken by the female alone, who is 

 said, when sitting, to avoid the dangers which beset her from prowling 

 foxes and other carnivores, by withholding her scent. But this is 

 surely pure guesswork ; at any rate no evidence worthy of the name 

 has ever been adduced in support of this theoiy. 



Comparisons are odious, and one hesitates to set the behaviour 

 of one species against another when in the face of danger. Thus, 

 while it may be true that in the defence of their downy young 

 the ptarmigan display more reckless courage than the partridge, it is 

 to be placed to the credit of the last-named species that it has afforded 

 proofs of regard for its unhatched young which cannot be matched in 

 the case of any other game-bird. This much appears from evidence 

 collected by Jesse, and quoted by Yarrell. 1 



The story runs as follows : " A gentleman living near Spilsby, in 

 Lincolnshire, was one day riding over his farm and superintending 

 his ploughmen, who were ploughing a piece of fallow land. He saw 



1 British Birds, vol. iii. p. 107. 



