22 PHASIANID^E. 



" The disposition of pheasants to wander in spring, and nidify at some 

 distance from their winter cover, is well known ; but I have not seen 

 any allusion made to their habit of frequenting potato fields in summer 

 and autumn. I have, however, often observed them there, and believe 

 that they are fond of raw potatoes. I have occasionally remarked that 

 during the absence of the pheasant from its nest, the eggs (sometimes 

 thirteen in number)' were partially covered with hay, which I believed 

 to have been placed there by the bird itself." 



Upon looking to notes on the food observed in opening ten phea- 

 sants, shot at various times and places during five months — from 

 November until April inclusive — I find that the stones of haws or fruit 

 of the white-thorn appeared in seven of them ; in addition to these 

 were grain, small seeds, and peas : one exhibited a few roots of plants 

 and twigs of trees : in another were thirty-seven full-grown acorns, 

 some of which were large, others small ; the gizzard showed, in addi- 

 tion, a mass of them : a third was nearly filled with grass : one only 

 contained any insects — all presented numerous fragments of stone. A 

 pheasant which frequented our own garden daily for some time in sum- 

 mer was accused of feeding on black currants ; the tops (and as a 

 friend assures me the bulbs also) of turnips are sometimes eaten ; and 

 a fine male bird was in the habit of visiting a stable-yard in the vicinity 

 of Belfast very early in the morning for the purpose of feeding there. 

 A.n intelligent taxidermist once brought a pheasant's stomach to me on 

 the 6 th of April, for the purpose of showing that it was chiefly filled 

 with the yellow flowers of the Pilewort Crowfoot {Ranunculus ficaria) , 

 which- he had always found in birds killed in spring, or during the 

 period of the flowering of that plant, — one of the very earliest of our 

 indigenous species in putting forth its petals. The same stomach con- 

 tained numerous blades of grass, which in no other instance had been 

 met with in the pheasant by my informant. He knows the tuberous 

 roots of the silver weed (Potendlla anserina) to be much eaten by this 

 bird, when they are turned up to the surface in fields under cultivation. 



While spending the month of January 1849, at the sporting quarters 

 of Ardimersy Cottage, island of Islay, where pheasants are abundant, 

 and attain a very large size, the riug-necked variety, too, being common, 

 I observed that these birds in the outer or wilder covers feed, during 

 mild as well as severe weather, almost wholly on hazel-nuts. In the 

 first bird that was remarked to contain them, they were reckoned and 



