BY MANY HANDS 169 



if anything is wrong. If a good watch is not kept, one 

 stoat might soon spoil several nests by sucking the eggs. 

 Every hedge or belt should be rigidly trapped, and any 

 trace of vermin noticed at once, or great havoc may be done. 



I believe in taking up say twenty nests in a hundred, 

 making sure that the bird has laid her first lot by adding 

 sham or clear pheasant eggs. She will then lay 8 or 10 

 eggs, sometimes more, that would never have been laid 

 had she been allowed to continue with her first lot. I do 

 not believe in making up nests, unless a very small nest 

 in the case of a bird known to have lost some eggs by 

 vermin, but prefer to hatch under hens, timed to hatch 

 the same date as the majority of the first nests, so that 8 

 to 10 chicks can be put down with each pair of birds 

 hatching at the same time. I do not hand -rear any if 1 

 can avoid it ; they have all the disadvantages of hand- 

 reared pheasants, and are given to migrate. I believe in 

 changing English eggs, and prefer eggs from the north of 

 England or Scotland. I do not like Hungarian birds ; I 

 have noticed that the stock has shown a tendency to 

 decrease on ground where they have been put down in 

 numbers for three or four seasons running. They do not 

 seem to stand rough weather as well as the English birds, 

 and are more given to nesting in the open fields. 



We are not troubled much by foxes as the woods are 

 at the heavy land end of the shoot. I find reynardine, 

 paraffin, and old iron laid round the nests a good pro- 

 tection. Rats, stoats, M-easels, house cats, and hedgehogs 

 are our worst vermin ; the latter a bad thief, and his 

 handiwork easy to recognise, for he always bites a piece 

 out of the side of the egg. Kestrels are very destructive 

 to young partridges on our large fields until they get their 

 feathers, after that the sparrow-hawk is a worse danger. 

 Owls counteract any harm they do by the numbers of rats 

 they kill, and I do not think they all kill game. Some 

 rooks are bad egg-stealers, and have become worse of late 

 years. 



