62 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



supply of water near their feeding ground has a considerable 

 influence on their habits. After feeding heartily on dry 

 food, they will stray for water if there be none handy, and 

 will stay away afterwards till hungry again, thus running the 

 risk of being shot during their wanderings. To keep 

 pheasants in their own coverts,, take means of making them 

 fond of them, even though there be no water near I have 

 found Jerusalem artichokes the best means of attraction. 

 They are so fond of these tubers that they will hunt them by 

 sight or smell from any obscure corner. Give them also 

 potatoes (small and large), mangold wurtzel, carrots, white- 

 hearted cabbage, and savoys, all of which they will readily 

 eat, and which not only prevent their straying for water, but 

 afford a change of food that is genial and natural to their 

 taste and well-doing, besides economising their dry corn food. 

 Where the coverts abound with acorns, beechmast, Spanish 

 ehesnuts, and groundnuts, the pheasant requires but little 

 feeding till the middle of December." 



The rainfall may be utilised with advantage for re- 

 plenishing the receptacles employed for watering pheasants 

 in coverts, by the use of sheets of corrugated iron, painted an 

 inconspicuous colour. These may be erected in the form of 

 roofing to a shed of a few feet high, which will also provide 

 shelter and dry scratching ground for the birds, the rain- 

 water being run off into the drinking troughs. 



The planting of Jerusalem artichokes on waste spots and 

 -coverts will be found to be an exceedingly advantageous mode 

 of feeding pheasants and preventing their straying from their 

 own coverts. When once established, these plants readily 

 reproduce themselves and afford a large amount of food 

 for the birds. For preventing pheasants straying, the use of 

 raisins scattered in the coverts is particularly advantageous. 

 They will attract birds even from distant coverts to so great 

 an extent that the owners of these latter may have to employ 

 them in their own defence. So attractive are raisins to 

 pheasants that the birds are not infrequently captured by 



