CHAPTEE IV. 



MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES 

 (CONTINUED). 



FEEDING IN COYERTS. 



HE FOOD necessary to keep together a large stock 

 of pheasants during the winter months, and prevent 

 them straying to adjoining preserves, may be 

 supplied in various modes. The birds may either be 

 hand-fed day by day in the same manner as domestic 

 fowls ; or from troughs which are so constructed as to 

 prevent the food being accessible to smaller birds ; or they 

 may be supplied with small stacks of unthrashed corn, from 

 which to help themselves. 



If fed by hand, a fixed place is necessary, to which the 

 pheasants must be accustomed to resort at a particular hour, 

 otherwise the sparrows and other small birds will have far 

 more than their fair share of the grain, particularly in severe 

 weather when the ground is frozen hard. Fed in this manner, 

 the birds become almost as tame as farm-yard fowls. In 

 order to accustom them to one spot, at the end of September 

 or earlier, according to the season, carry a few bundles of 

 beans and barley, in the straw, to the spots in the coverts 

 which are selected for feeding places; by watching these 

 bundles it will soon be found when they have attracted the 

 notice of the birds, and when it is observed that they have 

 been attacking them, the better plan is to pull them apart, so 

 as to enable the corn to be found more readily. When the 



