F THE PHEASANTS' ROOSTING-TREES 267 



easy targets for the gun of the night shooter. While 

 the leaves remain the pheasants are well screened 



and they often owe their lives to their habit 

 The of roosting in oaks, where the leaves give 



Rooming?' shelter long after beeches are bare. On 

 Trees a night of bright moonshine beeches 



scarcely provide any cover for the bulky 

 form of a roosting pheasant. No doubt it is rather for 

 comfort than through cunning that pheasants choose 

 a roosting-place in oaks. They show no cunning in 

 choosing their oak-tree, for they will roost night after 

 night on some low branch overhanging a road. They 

 seem naturally to prefer oaks to beeches for a lodging. 

 Unlike most trees, oaks throw out their branches 

 horizontally, but beeches' branches tend to rise 

 vertically. Their bark is smooth and cold, but oak 

 bark is rough, easily gripped, and warm. 



When oaks have lost all their leaves the beeches 

 provide the better cover ; for their vertical lines 

 form some sort of screen. Even with a full moon 

 it is not always easy to see sleeping pheasants which 

 go to roost in the lower branches. It may be more 

 difficult to see a roosting pheasant than to shoot it 

 though the hardest shot a pheasant can give is when 

 it flies by night. Fir-trees in a pheasant covert have 

 a special value to the roosting birds. While unsuit- 

 able as sleeping-places, for the birds cannot fly up 

 through the thick twiggy branches, nor can they see 

 where they are going, the firs make the more suitable 

 roosting-trees warm and cosy, and against their dark 



