EEARING AND PROTECTION. 39 



would be more plentiful, the chicks stronger, and better able to contend with a 

 wet season and the numerous enemies they have to battle with." 



The frequent occurrence of old barren hens that have assumed either whoUy 

 or in part the plumage of the male is a proof, if one were wanting, that in many 

 coverts the old worn out hens are left longer than is desirable or profitable. 



The chapters on the Management of Pheasants in Preserves would be very 

 incomplete without the consideration of the best means of protecting them against 

 their numerous enemies. The chief four-footed depredators are cats, foxes, hedgehogs, 

 and polecats. Their other enemies are feathered and unfeathered. Amongst the 

 former may be included crows, magpies, and jays, which are great destroyers of 

 eggs. But the unfeathered bipeds, known as poachers, are |perhaps the most 

 destructive. By far the greater number of pheasants purloined by the poacher 

 are shot at night; this destruction may be prevented in great part, without the 

 necessity for night watching, by having suitable coverts, as has been already fully 

 explained in the last chapter. Where larches and other trees with exposed 

 horizontal branches abound, recourse should be had to mock pheasants, which are 

 excessively annoying to poachers, as they cause them to expend ammunition uselessly 

 and alarm the neighbouring keepers, without any profitable result. Mock 

 pheasants, quite incapable of being distinguished from the real birds at night, may 

 be made of hay bands, rushes, or fern, bound with tarred twine or wire on a 

 stick about two feet long. Captain Darwin, in his " Grame Preserver's Manual," 

 writing of mock pheasants, states, " they are very easily made, but their situations 

 should be often varied. Some keepers make them of board cut into the shape of 

 a pheasant. These are of little use, for a poacher gets under them and sees at 

 once what they are. Others make the body of wood, roughly turned in a lathe, 

 and nail a strip of wood on it for a tail, or with real tail feathers stuck in. The 

 best mode of making mock pheasants after all is as follows: Get a bunch of long 

 hay and roll it round a stick tiU it is the size of a pheasant's body, leaving enough 

 for a tail; wrap it with thin copper wire down to the end of the tail; cut a peg 

 about six inches long and as thick as a lead-pencil; wind a bit of hay round the 

 end to make a head, and run the peg into the body. Tie these imitations on the 

 branches of larch trees here and there. Pheasants prefer this kind of tree to 

 others, in consequence of the boughs coming out straight, and so allowing them 

 a flat surface to sit on. In woods where there are no foxes, and where the ground 

 vermin has been well killed down, it is a good plan (especially if you think it a 

 likely night for poachers) to unroost the pheasants in the evening. They will not 

 fly up again that night. If you begin by unroosting the pheasants when they 

 are young, and have only flown up a few nights, they wUl take to roosting on the 

 ground altogether, and never fly up at aU. Pheasants that have not been accustomed 

 to be driven down at aU are made rather shy by the frequent repetition of this 



