CHAPTEE IV. 



Feeding in Coverts. 



THE food necessary to keep together a large stock 

 of pheasants during the winter months, and prevent 

 them straying to adjoining preserves, may be supplied 

 in various modes. The birds may either be hand-fed day by 

 day in the same manner as domestic fowls ; or from troughs 

 which are so constructed as to prevent the food being acces- 

 sible to smaller birds ; or they may be supphed with small 

 stacks of unthrashed corn, from which to help themselves. 



If fed by hand, a fixed place is necessary, to which the 

 pheasants must be accustomed to resort at a particular hour, 

 otherwise the sparrows and other small birds will have far 

 more than their fair share of the grain, particularly in severe 

 weather when the ground is frozen hard. Fed in this manner, 

 the birds become almost as tame as farmyard fowls. In 

 order to accustom them to one spot, at the end of September 

 or earlier, according to the season, carry a few bundles of 

 beans and barley, in the straw, to the spots in the coverts 

 which are selected for feeding-places ; by watching these 

 bundles it will soon be found when they have attracted the 

 notice of the birds, and when it is observed that they have 

 been attacking them, the better plan is to pull them apart, so 

 as to enable the corn to be found more readily. When the 

 corn is beginning to decrease, feed from the hand daily ; and 

 in order to ensure regularity, allow one man to distribute at 

 the feeding-place, among the decaying barley-straw and 

 beanhaulm, a small bagful of beans and barley, as early as 

 he can find his way to the spot in the morning, conceahng 

 the corn as well as he is able ; later in the day, say towards 

 three or four in the afternoon, again deposit a mixture of 



