NESTING OF THE PHEASANT. 15 



took -with infinite composure. She was very soon discovered 

 on her nestj and actually suffered herself when sitting to be 

 stroked down her plumage by the children and others who 

 visited her, and this without budging an inch. In fact, she 

 seemed rather to like it. Perhaps she became a pet with the 

 neighbours from this unusual docility, and her brood (fourteen 

 in number) was thereby saved; for every egg was hatched, 

 and the young birds have all got safely away." 



Habitually a nester on the ground, the hen pheasant will 

 sometimes select the deserted nest of an owl or squirrel as a 

 place for the disposition and incubation of her eggs. Several 

 examples of this occurrence are on record, but the following 

 may suffice to prove that the circumstance is not so unfrequent 

 as may have been supposed. One correspondent writes as 

 follows : " Our head keeper told me that one of his watchers 

 had found a pheasant's nest up a spruce fir tree. I was 

 incredulous, so I went with him, and had the under-man there 

 to show us. The bird was sitting on the nest — an old squirrel's. 

 The man said she had twelve eggs. He also told us that he 

 knew of another in a similar situation in the same plantation. 

 The nest 1 saw was about twelve feet from the ground. The 

 watchers found it in looking for nests of flying vermin, as 

 some had escaped the traps." 



Another states : " A keeper on the Culhorn estate, when 

 on his rounds in search of vermin, observed a nest, which he 

 took to be that of a hawk, on a Scotch fir tree, about fifteen 

 feet from the ground. On throwing up a stone out flew a 

 fine hen pheasant. The keeper then ascended the tree, and 

 found, to his astonishment, eight pheasants' eggs in an old 

 owl's nest. He 'removed the eggs, and placed them under a 

 hen, and at the expiration of three days he had eight fine 

 lively pheasant birds." 



A third states that ''at Ohaddlewood, near Plympton, 

 Devon, a pheasant has built its nest (twelve feet frOm the 

 ground) in a fork of an ash tree close to the house, and has 

 now laid eight eggs." 



