28 MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES. 
plenty of room to the best and most thriving amongst them, whose side branches 
will then gradually become more or less pendulous, and so will afford far more shelter 
than could be obtained from a larger number of trees standing too thick. Pheasants 
in a covert like this, need no great quantity of shelter upon the ground, for they 
sit, even during the daytime, chiefly in the tree-tops. They bask there, on the south 
side of the summit of a spruce or pine, in the sun’s rays, with great delight; and 
in heavy snow-storms whole days will often pass when they never descend to feed, 
but prefer to sit quiet, eating the green spines of these resinous trees (in the manner of 
the black grouse and capercailzie) when crispened by the frost, and depending upon 
snow by way of beverage. I have strongly advocated the spruce and silver firs as 
affording the most tempting perch to the birds at nightfall; still, be it understood, that 
the Scotch pine, pinaster, Weymouth pine (P. Jaricio) and others are all excellent. All 
that is needed is a little generalship and foresight in pheasant preservers, and a deter- 
mination to confide in these resources, rather than in the expensive, dangerous, and 
inefficient practice of employing night watchers.”’ 
Commenting on these suggestions, another correspondent writes, “I am not 
aware that the practical advantages and excellence of the plan of planting large 
clumps or squares of spruce, either alone or blended with silver firs, and mixing, or 
not, a few deciduous trees with them, for the special purpose of forming pheasant 
roosts, have ever been so fully and perspicuously set forth as explained in the 
previous article. I could quote an instance of extensive coverts having been planted - 
on a similar principle, save that oaks were planted in lieu of birch, with the 
ultimate view of affording these birds the opportunity of preening their plumes 
whilst perched on the topmost boughs, and enjoying themselves in this secluded 
retreat during bright weather, to which luxury, under such circumstances, they are 
very partial. In these cases the Spanish chesnut tree might sometimes perhaps be 
found an eligible substitute for either the birch or the oak. The larch undoubtedly 
is a favourite roosting tree with the pheasant, so much so indeed that I have seen 
odd ones roosting in larches growing within a few yards only of the impenetrable 
spruce grove. Besides being horizontal, the branches of the larch are rough, 
affording good foothold, and when the tree is properly grown are but at short 
distances one above the other, whilst, the collaterals being numerous, the tree in 
reality affords far more shelter than it appears capable of yielding, though, of 
course, far too little to conceal the bird from the prying eye of the night poacher. 
Pheasants are remarkably fond of ‘hips;’ and if the wild rose tree which pro- 
duces them be kept low by a proper attention to pruning, not only can the birds 
reach the fruit easily, but the branches stool out and afford admirable covert. Cock 
pheasants are naturally of a vagrant turn, and at times will ‘leave their beans and 
barley,’ in order to indulge in this their favourite propensity to rove in search of 
their natural wild food in the woodlands, hedgerows, &c. THarly in December last 
