EASTERN CHINESE RING-NECKED PHEASANT 125 



twenty-five birds were collected to a single gun. With a party directed with some 

 regard to strategy there might have been a very good bag made on that occasion, for 

 pheasants were as plentiful as one could remember them within a dozen years after the 

 end of the Taiping rebellion. Then whole bouquets of birds might be put up out of 

 favourite pieces of cover, reeds, bamboos, or what not. In the morning they might be 

 seen running ahead of sportsmen till they had reached what they thought a safe distance 

 to rise, or disappeared altogether in cover. Shooting was comparatively easy in those 

 days, and little was looked at but pheasants, deer, hares, pig, and such waterfowl as 

 got up from creeks and ponds. Native hunters were few and far between, and there 

 was not the market demand there is now. 



"Since pheasants feed in the early mornings and evenings, it follows that the best 

 shooting is not to be got at those times, but during the middle part of the day, when, 

 after a satisfactory breakfast — and pheasants have quite as good an appetite as other 

 birds— they are lying up for the siesta. Sometimes cocks and hens go up together, but 

 more often they are found separately. Cocks particularly, if alone, seem to have a 

 special liking for little clumps of young bamboos : hens, on the contrary, love a warm, 

 grassy bank such as might otherwise contain quails. But it is not wise to attempt too 

 exactly to define likely places, for the pheasants at times seem ubiquitous, and will rise 

 from the middle of an open field as readily as from the most tempting cover. In 

 common with partridges they appear to like a drink of water during the heat of the day. 

 It will not, of course, be news to the experienced sportsman when he hears that the 

 pheasant swims well. That, however, is a fact at which the beginner may be surprised. 

 I have seen on two or three occasions winged birds trying to save themselves by swim- 

 ming across creeks, when their motion is similar to that of the moor-hen, the head going 

 backward and forward in time with the movement of the feet. Some men declare that 

 they dive. 



''Their running powers are well known. A hard chase after an old cock is not a 

 bad test of the wind of the sportsman without a retriever. Once it was my fortune to 

 lose a fine bird notwithstanding the fact that I had a pointer. She was old, however, 

 and as the bird had a good start she actually got off to cover a good seven hundred 

 yards away, the dog giving up the chase. On two occasions our winter visitors, the 

 so-called 'Bromley' kites (a corruption of 'Brahminy') have unintentionally retrieved 

 birds for me, or rather have shown where they were, by their persistent attack on them. 

 When unhurt, a cock pheasant thinks nothing of the swoop of these gentry, but it is 

 otherwise when he has been hard hit." 



The Yangtze Valley Ring-necks roost upon the ground, even where there are suitable 

 trees, but in regions where ground-vermin are abundant the pheasants are driven into 

 whatever shelter they can find. Under such conditions the cocks are sometimes found 

 in the crown of the scrub oaks, dwarf oaks which have been trimmed and cut for fire- 

 wood, and whose thick central butt, pollard-like, has sent out thin shoots all around. 

 In the spring these slender shoots are brightly coloured and completely conceal the 

 brilliant hues of a cock pheasant's plumage. Several hens will come night after 

 night to some favourite bank of moss among a thin growth of pines, and squat close 

 together. In the reeds of the river-banks large covies find shelter in close proximity. 



In rocky regions, the pheasants, on cold days of early spring or late autumn, 



