46 PHEASANTS 



enough cover overhead to throw a dappled 

 shade over her sitting form. 



Pampered birds in pen and aviary may 

 often lay in March, but the wild hen 

 rarely begins to fill her nest till the last 

 week of April. She sits very close and 

 her neutral tints make her hard to detect 

 on the nest. Although the hen pheasant 

 knows all the devices by which mothers 

 in the bird world would seek to safeguard 

 their precious eggs from their many 

 enemies, yet there is a want of method in 

 her care for her charges which would 

 seem little short of criminal to that model 

 mother the partridge, who never fails in a 

 rigid observance of the precautions for 

 safety that instinct — ^the acquired know- 

 ledge of many generations — prescribes for 

 her guidance. Thus the pheasant, when 

 she leaves her nest to seek food, as she 

 does twice a day, in the early morning and 

 about four in the afternoon, will some- 

 times cover up her eggs as carefully as 

 could be wished, at other times leaving 

 them open to take their chance of dis- 



