CHAPTEE lY. 



MANAGEMENT OE PHEASANTS IN PRESERVES (CONTINUED). 



FEEDING IN COVEETS. 



HE FOOD necessary to keep together a large stock of 

 pheasants during the winter months, and prevent them 

 straying to adjoining preserves, may be supplied in various 

 modes. The birds may be hand-fed day by day in the 

 same manner as domestic fowls ; or they may be fed from 

 troughs which are so constructed as to prevent the food 

 being accessible to smaller birds ; or they may be sup- 

 plied with small stacks of unthrashed corn, from which 

 to help themselves. 



If fed by hand, a fis;ed place is necessary, to 

 which the pheasants must be accustomed to resort at a 

 particular hour, otherwise the sparrows and other small 

 birds will have far more than their fair share of the grain, 

 particularly in severe weather when the ground is frozen 

 hard. Fed in this manner, the birds become almost as tame as farm-yard fowls. 

 In order to accustom them to one spot, the following plan of procedure, which 

 is from the pen of a very practical correspondent, may be adopted: "At the 

 «nd of September or earlier, according to the season, carry a few bundles of 

 beans and about as many bundles of barley, in the straw, to the spots in the 

 coverts which are selected for feeding places; by watching these bundles it will 

 be soon found when they have attracted the notice of the birds, and the moment 

 it is observed that they have been attacking them in earnest, the better plan is 

 to pull them apart, so as to enable the corn to be found more readUy. When the 

 corn is beginning to decrease, I take to feeding from the hand, daily ; and the 

 plan I adopt, in order to ensure regularity, is this : I allow one man to distribute 

 at the feeding-place, among the decaying barley-straw and beanhaulm, a smaU 

 bagful of beans and barley, as early as he can find his way to the spot in the 

 morning, concealing the corn as well as he is able ; later in the day, say towards 



