FEEDING IN COVERTS. 35 



should be small brushwood, reeds, or straw. An open trellis floor of poles should 

 be raised two feet from the ground, and on this the corn in straw should be laid 

 for the pheasants to help themselves. In these huts the pheasants find shelter, 

 comfort, and' cover in rough, wintry, and severe weather. Care should be taken to 

 have plenty of dry dust on the floor underneath for the pheasants to bask in. This 

 is a most essential provision — quite as much so for pheasants as for our poultry — 

 for it is quite as natural for them to dust to clean themselves. It is a fact within 

 easy observation how the pheasant searches out the base of an old dry, dusty, poUard 

 tree or hedge bank to bask in the dust. Besides, every grain of corn that falls 

 through the open feeding floor is searched for and found in this dust. Underneath 

 and on the dusty floor is a safe and convenient place, sheltered from severe frost, 

 &c., to receive any other kind of food, such as refuse potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, 

 mangolds, swede turnips, cabbage, Spanish chesnuts, acorns, beechnuts, a few raisins, 

 Indian corn, or anything else you wish the pheasants to have. Such changes of food 

 cast about their feeding sheds are sure to secure them keeping pretty well to covert, ' 

 particularly if they have water at hand. I have seen large expenditures for well 

 digging or for the conveyance of water by ram and pipes from some stream at a 

 distance ; but the best and simplest plan to keep up a general supply of water for 

 the season the pheasant is in covert, is certainly the shallow catchpool system. In 

 my humble opinion, it is the most natural, convenient, and inexpensive plan of all 

 I have seen or had anything to do with in my time. I will explain what I mean 

 by catchpools: Choose any little slope or vaUey in high and dry coverts where 

 some command may be had of the surrounding surface water after rain; scoop out 

 a hole in the earth's surface in the shape of a spoon or bowl, sloping gradually aU 

 round to the centre and deepest part, which need not be deeper than from eighteen, 

 inches to three feet, according to width and length; the edges, to admit the water 

 running into it freely, must be kept a little under the earth's natural surface. Then 

 puddle the whole of its face with six inches of weU-wrought clay, paving it with 

 bricks laid flat, and giving it aU over a little coat of Portland cement. Thus you 

 have a first-class and lasting catchpit to hold water most of the year, indeed, the 

 whole season. Pheasants are expected to remain in covert for food and safety from 

 September to February, and then there is certainly always plenty of water. After 

 Eebruary the pheasant likes to go further away, and, soon after the gun is with- 

 drawn, is pretty sure to get distributed about in search of insects and various roots. 

 Pheasants rove about quietly during their breeding season, but little is seen or heard 

 of them after April till corn harvest, as they live a quiet, secluded life through 

 summer. I have made catchpools by casing them only with puddled clay. One 

 disadvantage of this is, in a long dry time the water gets low, and the clay sides 

 becoming exposed, contract, crack, and allow the water to run to waste if they are 

 not looked to when rain does come. There is also another way in which I have had 



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