OLD HENS 55 



by stealthily dropping a shutter attached to a string. 

 Where a wood with plenty of pheasants joins a belt or 

 wide hedgerow the keeper may erect guiding wings of 

 wire-netting, which converge on a covered-in tunnel, 

 and then gently beats the wood through in that direc- 

 tion. The pheasants are run into captivity in a short 

 time, and with little trouble. 



In the gamekeeper's eyes a hen pheasant becomes an 

 old hen when she enters upon her second nesting 

 season. But all cock pheasants are old birds 

 when they have seen their first Christmas 

 only seven or eight months having passed over their 

 glossy, green heads . With the New Year the youngest 

 of the cocks is old in craft, guile and cunning, and all 

 the keeper's skill is taxed to checkmate his endless 

 ways of escape. A beat of the wood has no sooner 

 started than all the birds depart to the point farthest 

 from the beaters. 



When catching up pheasants for the laying-pens, there 

 is always the difficulty of preventing their escape from 

 the wire-net enclosures, and it is interesting to see 

 the different devices by which this trouble is met. 

 The enclosure must not be covered over with wire- 

 netting, for the birds, whenever startled, would fly 



