How to Prevent Straying. 61 



■white-hearted cabbage, and savoys, all of which they will 

 readily eat, and which not only prevent their straying for 

 water, but afford a change of food that is genial and natural 

 to their taste and well-doing, besides economising their dry 

 corn food. Where the coverts abound with acorns, beech-mast, 

 Spanish chestnuts, and groundnuts, the pheasant requires 

 but little feeding till the middle of December." 



The rainfall may be utilised with advantage for replenishing 

 the receptacles employed for watering pheasants in coverts, 

 by the use of sheets of corrugated iron, painted an incon- 

 spicuous colour. These may be erected in the form of roofing 

 to a shed of a few feet high, which will also provide shelter 

 and dry scratching ground for the birds, the rain-water being 

 run off into the drinking troughs. 



The planting of Jerusalem artichokes on waste spots and 

 coverts will be found to be an exceedingly advantageous mode 

 of feeding pheasants and preventing their straying from their 

 own coverts. When once estabhshed, these plants readily 

 reproduce themselves and afford a large amount of food 

 for the birds. For preventing pheasants straying, the use of 

 raisins scattered in the coverts is particularly advantageous. 

 They will attract birds even from distant coverts to so great 

 an extent that the owners of these latter may have to employ 

 them in their own defence. So attractive are raisins to 

 pheasants that the birds are not infrequently captured by 

 poachers by means of a fish hook baited with a raisin and 

 suspended about the height of a running bird's head from the 

 ground. 



