50 Feeding in Coverts. 



barley and white peas, concealing the corn as before. In this 

 way scarcely a grain of corn is lost. Woodpigeons and jays 

 will sometimes intrude ; but, with attention in conceaHng the 

 corn and punctuality in feeding, any waste worth notice may 

 be prevented, and by observing how many birds come up to 

 their food it is easy to discover when anything is going wrong, 

 as the least disturbance will make pheasants shy, and will 

 be enough to put the keeper on the alert to discover the cause. 

 When fed by hand in this manner, a great variety of food 

 may be used. Maize is certainly one of the best ; weight 

 for weight it is usually much cheaper than barley, is better 

 reUshed by the pheasants, is far more fattening, and it 

 possesses the great recommendation of not being so readily 

 devoured by the sparrows, especially if the large, coarse, and 

 cheaper varieties are purchased. A correspondent, who has 

 kept pheasants for many years, and taken much trouble to 

 ascertain their preference for different kinds of food, states, 

 as a result of his experience, that " they prefer maize or 

 Indian corn to any other food that can be given to them. 

 I have frequently given the pheasants that come regularly to 

 my window to be fed equal parts of Indian corn, peas, small 

 horse-beans, wheat, barley, and oats, and they invariably take 

 them in the order in which I have written them. I have also 

 frequently done the same thing with those I keep shut up for 

 laying, and always with the same results. Pheasants that 

 I have had from elsewhere to put with them in confinement, 

 and that have never seen maize, take to it in a couple of days, 

 and then, hke the others, will eat nothing else so long as 

 they can get it ; and if I try them with the mixture above 

 named I find all the other grain neglected. The young 

 pheasants at the coops begin to eat it before they are as 

 large as partridges, and then entirely neglect the barley, &c. 

 I never see pheasants that are kept up in better condition 

 than my own, and they have nothing but Indian com, a few 

 turnip leaves, and clods of turf to pull to pieces. Another 

 great advantage of maize is that small birds cannot steal it. 



