120 WILD LIFE IX CHINA. 



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 coui^se, be news to the 

 experienced sport when he hears that the pheasant swims well. 

 That, however, isaf act at which the beginner may besurprised. I 

 have seen on two or three occasions winged birds try to save 

 themselves by swimming 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. All that I can say with confidence 

 respecting that is that, if they do, the fact accounts for the loss 

 of two or three birds that I can remember, one no later than 

 last season. 



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" kite (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 swoo^ of 

 these gentry, but it is otherwise when he has been hard hit. 



Pheasants are seldom found during the daytime on trees. 

 One may see them on a well-preserved ground in England 

 and now and then in China flying up on to the lower branches 

 when the dusk has come, and then going higher till they have 

 found what they consider a safe and comfortable perch for 

 the night. Poachers, of course, know all this, and sometimes 

 before roosting time has arrived have taken their stations 

 from which unseen to watch the exact positions they mean 

 to raid. But as a rule pheasants once ofi^ the perch rerfiain 

 on the ground till the time for rest has come round once 

 more. Onlyonori'eoccasioncanI remembefputtingphfei&sants 



