FEEDING IN COVERTS. 57 



corn is beginning to decrease, feed from the hand, daily ; and 

 in order to ensure regularity, allow one man to distribute at 

 the feeding-place, among the decaying barley-straw and 

 beanhaulm, a small bagful of beans and barley, as early as he 

 can find his way to the spot in the morning, concealing the 

 corn as well as he is able ; later in the day, say towards 

 three or four in the afternoon, again deposit a mixture of 

 barley and white peas, concealing the corn as before. In this 

 way scarcely a grain of corn is lost. Woodpigeons and jays 

 will sometimes intrude ; but, with attention in concealing the 

 corn and punctuality in feeding, any waste worth notice may 

 be prevented, and by observing how many birds come up to 

 their food, it is easy to discover when anything is going 

 wrong, as the least disturbance will make pheasants shy, and 

 will be enough to put the keeper on the alert to discover the 

 cause. 



When fed by hand in this manner, a great variety of food 

 may be used. Maize is certainly one of the best ; weight 

 for weight it is usually much cheaper than barley, is better 

 relished by the pheasants, is far more fattening, and it 

 possesses the great recommendation of not being so readily 

 devoured by the sparrows, especially if the large, coarse, and 

 cheaper varieties are purchased. A correspondent, who has 

 kept pheasants for many years, and taken much trouble to 

 ascertain their preference for different kinds of food, states, 

 as a result of his experience, that " they prefer maize or 

 Indian corn to any other food that can be given to them. 

 I have frequently given the pheasants that come regularly to 

 my window to be fed equal parts of Indian corn, peas, small 

 horse-beans, wheat, barley, and oats, and they invariably take 

 them in the order in which 1 have written them. I have also 

 frequently done the same thing with those I keep shut up for 

 laying, and always with the same results. Pheasants that 

 I have had from elsewhere to put with them in confinement, 

 and that have never seen maize, take to it in a couple of days, 

 and then, like the others, will eat nothing else so long as 



