72 Protection in Covert. 



plantation ran along about a hundred feet above the rocky sea- 

 coast, and as we advanced along the slippery path we found 

 several sucked pheasants' eggs, evidently the work of crows ; 

 nor had we gone far before we came suddenly upon a whole 

 family of hooded rascals, five young and two old birds. In 

 the course of about a quarter of a mile we counted over a 

 hundred empty shells which had evidently been carried to the 

 path and there devoured. How many more might have been 

 discovered had we searched it is impossible to say, but we 

 saw ample evidence of the wholesale destruction which a 

 family of crows is capable of committing among pheasants' 

 eggs." 



The moorhen, waterhen, or common gallinule is occasion- 

 ally destructive to young pheasants. Mr. Gould recounted 

 the evidence in " The Birds of Great Britain," and Mr. H. J. 

 Partridge, of Hockham Hall, Thetford, writing to the Zoologist, 

 stated that " At the beginning of July, the keeper 

 having lost several pheasants about three weeks old from a 

 'Copse, and having set traps in vain for winged and four-footed 

 vermin, determined to keep watch for the aggressor, when, 

 ;after some time, a moorhen was seen walking about near the 

 "Copse ; the keeper, supposing it only came to eat the young 

 pheasants' food, did not shoot it, until he saw the moorhen 

 strike a young pheasant, which it killed immediately and 

 devoured, except the leg and wing bones. The remains agreed 

 exactly with eight found before." 



Lord Lilford, writing in " Dresser's Birds of Europe," 

 says : " I look upon the waterhen as an enemy to the game- 

 preserver, not only from the quantity of pheasant food Avhich 

 it devours, but from the fact that it will attack, kill, and eat 

 young birds of all sorts. The bird is a great favourite of 

 mine, and I should be sorry to encourage its destruction, but 

 I am persuaded that it is a dangerous neighbour to young 

 game birds " ; and in his " Birds of Northamptonshire " he 

 adds, " We cannot acquit them of the charge of a very pugna- 

 cious and destructive tendency amongst their own and other 



