28 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANT 



of a brooding bird is sure to awaken some pleasant 

 train of thought. I like to catch the precise attitude 

 of a sitting pheasant without attracting her notice, 

 and by a mental effort to photograph her easy repose 

 upon the mind's vision, so that every delicate blade 

 of grass, all the exquisite tracery of the dead and 

 crumbling leaves, may be remembered as a sight of 

 beauty; and especially the shapely form of the russet- 

 plumed bird, with her finely turned bill and bright, 

 distrustful irides, her whole being absorbed in the 

 supreme effort to fulfil the duties of maternal love. 

 To me there seems to be a world of natural poetry 

 latent in the possibilities that a pheasant's nest sug- 

 gests ; indeed, it sets one's mind working for the rest 

 of the day. 



But mention must be made of the precise circum- 

 stances under which pheasants have nested aloft. 

 And first, it must not be supposed that the phrase 

 just employed implies that pheasants build ^^^xxsX nests 

 of their own ; for nothing could be more absurd. 

 When a pheasant decides to nest in a tree, she takes 

 possession of an old nest of the wood-pigeon, sparrow- 

 hawk, or some other bird. One of the most recent 

 instances of a pheasant choosing an arboreal site for 

 her eggs occurred in 1892, and was reported by 

 Thomas Scott in the following words : 'On May 20 



