THE PHEASANT OF THE WOODLANDS 25 



of May, just about the time that the first broods of 

 woodcock are beginning to fly. In the Caucasus hen 

 pheasants begin to lay from the middle to the end of 

 April, according to the character of the spring, for 

 warm genial weather hastens on nidification. March 

 is the earliest month in which any of my correspon- 

 dents have found the eggs of wild pheasants, and 

 their experience would probably apply equally well 

 to the British Islands. For example, the Rev. G. C. 

 Green, of Modbury, Devon, authenticated the hatch- 

 ing of eleven pheasant chicks as early as April r8, in 

 which case all the eggs must have been laid by the 

 middle of March. Another early brood of pheasants 

 was reported from Milford Haven in 1882. In this 

 case the birds had all hatched out on April 27.' A 

 year earlier eight young pheasants were hatched out 

 upon a Norfolk farm on May 2.^ When I was study- 

 ing birds on the Rhine, the keepers showed me num- 

 bers of pheasants' nests full of eggs in July, and my 

 personal experience of late nests in the North of 

 Scotland is very similar. There are rare instances 

 in which pheasants incubate their eggs during the 

 autumn months. In 1893, Mr. W. W. Blest was out 

 shooting partridges on September 3, near Staplehurst, 

 when he disturbed a pheasant hen, which was sitting 



' Field, May 6, 1882. " Ibid. May 14, 18S1. 



