104 PHEASANTS FOE COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



hens in confinement is greatly in excess of that produced by 

 them in a wild state, sometimes as many as twenty-five or 

 thirty being laid by one hen. This extreme prolificacy 

 tends to exhaust the birds, and it will be found most 

 advantageous to turn them out when they have finished 

 laying, and to supply their places by young poults. 



It not infrequently happens that a greater number of eggs 

 are required for hatching under farmyard hens than are pro- 

 duced by the birds in the pheasantries ; in such cases the 

 surplus eggs in the nests of the wild birds may be ad- 

 vantageously collected. This, however, may be done in a 

 right or a wrong way. They should be taken before the hen 

 pheasant begins to sit ; and if removed one at a time every 

 other day as the bird is laying, they are certain not to have 

 been partly hatched. 



Eichard Jeffries, in a most graphic article on the pleasures 

 of pheasant rearing, describing the gathering of the eggs, 

 truly says : ' ' Unfortunately nothing is more easy to find than 

 a pheasant's nest. Like a cockney looking for a home in the 

 suburbs, the hen pheasant seems to prefer a lively situation 

 near a thoroughfare, with a good view of anything that may 

 be going on. It needs no great practice to catch the glance 

 of the bright beady eye among the roots of the roadside 

 hedgerow, or to distinguish the grey mottled plumage among 

 the grass and nettles in the ditch below. Look under that 

 heap of fallen boughs, and as likely as not there are the 

 green-grey eggs dropped under the very outermost, where 

 there is scarcely a pretence to cover, although, had she taken 

 the trouble to force her way one half-yard further, the hen 

 might have laid them safe out of sight of all but ground 

 vermin. So by dint of poking about among the grass and 

 the branches and brambles, by looking under furze bushes 

 and in hedgerows, and in the cavities formed at the foot of 

 tree trunks, you may come upon a good number of nests in 

 the afternoon, should birds be tolerably plentiful. Very 

 likely indeed you have found too many eggs to be accommo- 



