58 MANAGEMENT OF PHEASANTS IN CONFINEMENT. 



" Our aviary here being within easy flight of natural coverts, we adopt clipping 

 in preference to pinioning, since, when the egg harvest closes, hy extracting the 

 crippled feathers, a gradual recovery of power enables the birds one by one to effect 

 escape; the exodus thus permitted being generally fully accomplished in sufficient 

 time for a thorough cleaning and preparation of the aviary in readiness for its 

 proposed future young occupants. One of the great secrets of success lies in 

 variety of dry and liberality of green food, together with a generous supply of 

 frecjuently changed water, gravel or road grit, ashes, chalk, and pounded bones. 



"I now propose offering a few suggestions touching more particularly the 

 position, construction, and general management of the pheasant pens or aviaries. It 

 may, however, be premised that their size and the numbers of birds proposed to be kept, 

 greatly modifies many minor matters of detail, with reference not only to the health, 

 but also to the comfort of the prisoners. On the all-important question of site— fair 

 contiguity to the keeper's cottage should be observed ; placed at too great a distance, 

 a laxity, in winter more especially, of that solicitude so essential to their welfare, 

 is likely to be engendered; whUe on the other hand close proximity, above all 

 should there be many children, may, with all their custodian's care, prove the cause 

 of great and irrevocable mischief. Total isolation, again, in the recesses of a deep, 

 secluded covert, renders the birds so nervously sensitive, that they are apt, upon the 

 slightest unexpected excitement, to lose all self-control, dash about, and thus risk 

 eggs, limbs, and even life. 



" Our pens are placed within five yards of, and parallel to, a leading carriage 

 drive, a thoroughfare daily in use. Prom earliest youth, therefore, the birds are 

 more or less inured to the ever-changing sights and sounds incidental to ordinary 

 traffic. Their thus seeing and hearing aU going on around gradually enables them 

 to acquire such an amount of courage, that curiosity usurps the place of fright; 

 the cocks crowing joyously yet defiantly, while the hens peer inquisitively, yet 

 fearlessly, through the lattice of their harems. The pens should be sufficiently 

 shielded by trees, so as to insure in very sunny weather a grateful shade; never- 

 theless, too much leafy shelter is apt to prove provocative of damp and cold. 

 They should also, while enjoying a southern aspect, be well protected from the east 

 wind. Thus placed the birds are better left without any weU-meant but fanciful 

 attempts at further increasing their comfort. The little matters above enumerated 

 excepted, the more they are exposed to the elements and permitted to rough it, 

 the healthier and more robust will they become. 



" As in our present case here, so it frequently occurs that insufficient space 

 militates against that annual shifting of aviaries on to new ground, so often recom- 

 mended, and upon which, so far as my experience serves me, where the utmost 

 attention to scrupulous cleanliness has been observed, unnecessary stress is laid. 



"After the laying season, when our birds have availed themselves of the 



