84 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 

 bad thing for them many odd jobs the keeper 

 puts in their way when work is slack, and he puts 

 many rabbits into their hands to the comfort of 

 their hearts. 







The twenty-fifth day of April is one of the keeper's 

 high days. A large number of the twenty or thirty 

 thousand gamekeepers in this country then 

 * commit their first batches of pheasant eggs 



to the care of broody hens. Some keepers 

 cling to this date because their fathers did 

 so before them, in the same way that ancestral 

 etiquette decrees that on a certain fair-day cabbage 

 seed must be sown. No decided advantage is to be 

 gained by very early hatching ; but by April 25 

 the keeper usually has a goodly collection of eggs, 

 taken from wild birds' nests, and their quality does 

 not improve if kept, in an artificial way, longer than 

 a fortnight. Eyes ignorant of woodcraft would 

 pass a pheasant's nest which no keeper could fail 

 to see ; and would pass unseeingly over the brown 

 form of the sitting bird, heedless of the bright, dark 

 eyes that keenly watch the intruder's movements. 

 Pheasants like a little light cover, but do not care 

 to nest in thick and tangled undergrowth. They 

 love sunshine, and prefer a site where falls a shaft 

 of the morning sun ; if you note the position of a 

 sitting pheasant, you will probably find that her face 

 is sunwards. The mother bird is very jealous of 

 the sanctity ^of her nest ; if disturbed she does not 



