72 REMINISCENCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



The pheasant and its brood continues in the stubbles 

 and young thick hedgerows for some time after the corn 

 is carried, provided they are left quiet, but, if disturbed 

 or shot at they retire into the woods. Pheasants are very 

 fond of salt, and are particularly partial to alder cars, 

 willow beds, and marsh lands, with sedgy covers that are 

 situated near the sea. The woods or covers in which 

 you may have small stacks of buckwheat, or in which 

 the pheasants are occasionally fed with white peas or 

 oifal corn, should be kept as quiet as possible. One 

 cover, especially, should never be shot in excepting on 

 the last day or two of the season, when no quarter 

 is given to either sex, and the gamekeepers should 

 keep a sharp look-out in the wood or woods where 

 the buckwheat stacks are placed, to prevent the 

 poachers setting their snares for pheasants; and in 

 order to discover if any persons had visited the stacks, 

 the keeper should fasten across the approaches to 

 them some fine threads of worsted of a darkish green, 

 and if he finds any of them broken, he may conclude 

 that some poaching had been going on. If these buck- 

 wheat stacks cannot be narrowly watched on accomit of 

 having to preserve an extensive manor, I think it is 

 better not to have any, but to feed the pheasants at 

 certain times. In Cambridgeshire, my keeper used to 

 call the pheasants of an afternoon to feed, with a whistle. 

 It was in an alder car of about an acre and a half near 

 the park, and was surrounded by a wide ditch, in some 

 parts nearly six feet in depth of water, and the entrance 

 was by a plank laid across the ditch. Many of the 

 alders were large and high, on which the pheasants 

 could perch at night, and in some parts the ground was 

 sufficiently dry for the pheasants to feed on. If the 



