16 PHEASANTS FOE COVERTS AND AVIARI'ES. 



It is di SB cult to ascertain wliether or not in tlie instances 

 in which the young are hatched in these elevated situations, 

 they fall out of the nest and survive or are killed and carried 

 away by predatory animals, or whether they are safely 

 removed by the parent birds, and if so, by what means ; even 

 the following accounts do not throw much light upon the 

 subject. A correspondent of The Field stated that " A hen 

 pheasant made her nest in an oak tree, about nine feet from 

 the ground. The young were hatched, and she succeeded in 

 taking seven young ones safely to the ground, leaving five 

 dead in the nest, and one bad egg." A second stated that in 

 the park at Fillingham, Lincoln, a pheasant deposited eight 

 eggs in the nest of a woodpigeon in a fir tree upwards of six- 

 teen feet from the ground ; she hatched out seven of them, 

 but was unfortunate, as four were killed ; they were supposed 

 to have fallen from the nest. And a third reported that on 

 the estate of the Marquis of Hertford, at Sudborne Hall, 

 Suffolk, a pheasant had taken possession of a nest deserted by 

 a sparrow-hawk, in a spruce fir, twenty-five feet from the 

 ground, and hatched eight young ones, seven of which she 

 succeeded in bringing safely down, but in what manner was 

 not stated. 



Although as a rule the male pheasant takes no heed of the 

 eggs laid by the female, or of the offspring when hatched, 

 there are some well ascertained exceptions. "Wild cock 

 pheasants have been seen sitting in nests in the coverts by 

 perfectly credible witnesses ; and, although it has been 

 suggested that the birds might have been hens that had 

 assumed the male plumage, such an occurrence is even more 

 unlikely than that a cock should sit, for these hens are always 

 perfectly barren, and must have assumed the male plumage at 

 the previous autumnal moult; in this condition they have 

 never been known to manifest the slightest desire to incubate. 

 Cocks have also been known to protect the young birds, as in 

 the following instance, which occurred in Aberdeenshire : " I 

 have for the last fortnight almost daily watched a cock 



