74 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



the next morning being that the eggs that had been left and 

 not collected for hatching under hens had been destroyed by 

 them, and during the season many hundreds of eggs were 

 thus lost before they could be collected by the keepers. 

 Since then the rooks have been kept in check. 



The great increase in the number of rooks throughout the 

 country in the first decade of the twentieth century, coupled 

 with the fact/ that when pressed by hunger, as in the case of 

 a drought, they take to egg stealing and other depredations, 

 has caused them to become formidable enemies of the game 

 preserver. 



Crows are even more destructive than rooks. As an 

 instance of their evil influence, I may quote from Mr. Ogilvie 

 Grant's work on "Game Birds. " Mr. Grant writes as follows: 

 " I was passing through a Scotch fir plantation forming part 

 of a large estate in the North of Scotland where thousands 

 of pheasants are annually reared and turned down. The 

 plantation ran along about a hundred feeb above the rocky 

 sea-coasfc, and as we advanced along the slippery path, we 

 found several sucked pheasants' eggs, evidently the work of 

 crows; nor had we gone far before we came suddenly upon a 

 whole family of hooded rascals, five young and two old birds. 

 In the course of about a quarter of a mile we counted over a 

 hundred empty shells which had evidently been carried to the 

 path and there devoured. How many more might have been 

 discovered had we searched it is impossible to say, but we 

 saw ample evidence of the wholesale destruction which a 

 family oi crows is capable of committing among pheasants' 

 eggs." 



The moorhen, waterhen, or common gallinule, is 

 occasionally destructive to young pheasants. Mr. Gould 

 recounted the evidence in " The Birds of Great Britain/' and 

 Mr. H. J. Partridge, of Hockham Hall, Thetford, writing to 

 the Zoologist, stated that "At the beginning of July, the 

 keeper having lost several pheasants about three weeks old 

 from a copse, and having set traps in vain for winged and 



