26 MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN PEESERVES. 



of which it is impossible for any one to see the pheasants which happen to select 

 them as a roosting-place. Now, I have for twenty-two years preeerved these birds 

 in very considerable numbers without any night watching, and in a country where 

 all my neighbours have been repeatedly visited by gangs of poachers coming 

 sometimes from considerable distances, as weU as by occasional depredators of the 

 vicinity. I resolved to reject all night watching, and one of the first things that 

 I did, as a very young man, was to plant ten acres of spruce fir and Scotch pine 

 in a central and sheltered part of the estate, which might serve as an impregnable 

 roosting-place for pheasants. This was thirty years ago and more. But, at ten 

 years of age, the plantation was already of great service, and at fifteen was 

 invaluable. As it has been regularly thinned, it is now as good as ever. A number 

 of birch-trees were intermixed, which were very useful in drawing up and hastening 

 the growth of the spruces without exhausting the soil, as too great a multitude of 

 firs would have done. Nor do the pheasants resort to the birch at night as they 

 do to some other trees, larch especially, because they find that its branches are not 

 sufficiently horizontal to afford a commodious perch. 



"Ten years later I formed a second pheasant-roost of two acres in extent, very 

 near my house, and of this I have had the full benefit for many years past. It is 

 generally full of pheasants, and not one of them is visible to. the keenest eye in 

 the clearest moonlight. It consists of spruce and silver fir, regularly and unsparingly 

 thinned to keep the trees in health and vigour. "We never think of night watching, 

 even though guns be heard on adjoining estates, and the poachers have long given 

 us up in despair. This lesser stronghold is kept sacred from the guns of sportsmen, 

 who are sure to find the cock pheasants dispersed through all the other plantations 

 during the daytime. The first thing the birds do on a winter's morning, after 

 pecking up a few beans near their roost, is to wander in search of their natural wild 

 food in the woodlands, of which food the tuberous root of the celandine, or wood- 

 ranunculus, forms here a principal part. But, besides the remains of acorns and 

 beech-nuts, they feed, I believe, much on the fallen kieys of the ash and sycamore, 

 on hips and haws, and on tender blades of grass, besides innumerable worms, eggs 

 of slugs, and larvae of insects. Tempted by these dainties, and in frosty weather 

 even by the crisp green leaves of the holly, the cock pheasant wiU leave his 

 beans and barley, and betake himself to freer haunts every fine day, and there 

 the sportsman will find him; but, if his life be spared, he seldom fails to return 

 at night to his warm roost among the spruces, only with the advance of spring 

 wiU he quit it; for habit has made him luxurious as to his nights' quarters, and 

 more sensitive of cold than less lucky pheasants. 



" The Scotch pine is not nearly so tempting to the pheasant at night as the 

 spruce and silver firs, because its branches are not sufficiently horizontal; yet, on 

 dry hungry soils, it must be largely intermixed, since the firs are not to be 



