CHAPTER IV. 
MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES (CONTINUED). 
FEEDING IN COVERIS. 
{ * @ HE FOOD necessary to keep together a large stock of 
* pheasants during the winter months, and prevent them 
straying to adjoining preserves, may be supplied in various 
modes. The birds may be hand-fed day by day in the 
same manner as domestic fowls; or they may be fed from 
troughs which are so constructed as to prevent the food 
being .accessible to smaller birds; or they may be sup- 
plied with small stacks of unthrashed corn, from which 
to help themselves. 
If fed by hand, a fixed place is necessary, to 
Ge *® which the pheasants must be accustomed to resort at a 
: particular hour, otherwise the sparrows and other small 
birds will have far more than their fair share of the grain, 
particularly in severe weather when the ground is frozen 
hard. Fed in this manner, the birds become almost as tame as farm-yard fowls. 
In order to accustom them to one spot, the following plan of procedure, which 
is from the pen of a very practical correspondent, may be adopted: “At the 
end of September or earlier, according to the season, carry a few bundles of 
beans and about as many bundles of barley, in the straw, to the spots in the 
coverts which are selected for feeding places; by watching these bundles it will 
be soon found when they have attracted the notice of the birds, and the moment 
it is observed that they have been attacking them in earnest, the better plan is 
to pull them apart, so as to enable the corn to be found more readily. When the 
corn is beginning to decrease, I take to feeding from the hand, daily; and the 
plan I adopt, in order to ensure regularity, is this: I allow one man to distribute 
at the feeding-place, among the decaying barley-straw and beanhaulm, a small 
bagful of beans and barley, as early as he can find his way to the spot in the 
morning, concealing the corn as well as he is able; later in the day, say towards 
