REARING AND PROTECTION. 67 



worn out hens are left longer than is desirable or 

 profitable. 



The chapters on the " Management of Pheasants in 

 Preserves " would be incomplete without the consideration of 

 the best means of protecting them against their numerous 

 enemies. The chief four-footed depredators are cats, foxes, 

 hedgehogs, and stoats. Their other enemies are feathered 

 and unfeathered. Amongst the former are rooks, crows, 

 magpies, jackdaws, and jays, all great destroyers of 

 eggs. But the unfeathered bipeds, known as poachers, are 

 perhaps the most destructive. By far the greater number 

 of pheasants purloined by the poacher are shot at night; 

 this destruction may be prevented in great part, without 

 the necessity for night watching, by having suitable coverts, 

 as has been already fully explained in the preceding chapter. 

 Where larches and other trees with exposed horizontal 

 branches abound, recourse should be had to mock pheasants, 

 which are excessively annoying to poachers, as they cause 

 them to expend ammunition uselessly and alarm the neigh- 

 bouring keepers, without any profitable result. Mock 

 pheasants, quite incapable of being distinguished from the 

 real birds at night, may be made of hay bands, rushes, or 

 fern, bound with tarred twine or wire on a stick about two 

 feet long. Capt. Darwin, in his "Game Preserver's Manual," 

 writing of mock pheasants, states " they are very easily 

 made, but their situations should be. often varied. Some 

 keepers make them of board cut into the shape of a pheasant. 

 These are of little use, for a poacher gets under them and 

 sees at once what they are. Others make the body of wood 

 roughly turned in a lathe, and nail a strip of wood on it for 

 a tail, or with real tail feathers stuck in. The best mode of 

 making mock pheasants after all is as follows : Gret a bunch 

 of long hay and roll it round a stick till it is the size of a 

 pheasant's body, leaving enough for a tail ; wrap it with thin 

 copper wire down to the end of the tail ; cut a peg about six 

 inches long and as thick as a lead pencil; wind a bit of hay 



