52 



Points on Care and Breedmg of Pheasants, etc 



WILD MALLARD DUCKS 



"People from Denver and picnic parties from adjoining villages, come to my country 

 pheasantry and visit my exhibition aviaries in City Park, where I rear just -enough young 

 birds, in plain view from the walks and drives, to give all interested an idea of what the in- 

 dustry is like. 



"It would be interesting 

 to know just how many in- 

 sects a pair of these birds 

 will eat in a year. Nearly 

 1,200 wire worms have been 

 taken from the crop of a 

 single pheasant, and for 

 another bird 440 grubs of the 

 grand-daddy-long-legs, con- 

 stituted a single meal. That 

 they are great destroyers of 

 the seeds of noxious weeds 

 is well known. 



"It would not be sup- 

 posed that a bird like a 

 pheasant would kill those 

 destructive little field mice, 

 or meadow mice, as they are called. But they do, and it would surprise one to see 

 how quickly they do it. Pheasants are perhaps the swiftest birds afoot of all the small 

 Gallinaceous game, and they can pick up a mouse before the race has fairly begun. Then 

 they thrash it upon the ground and keep pecking it until it is dead, after which they eat every 

 vestige of the body but the skin and skull. Young mice they swallow whole and cases are 

 on record where they have been choked to death by the rodents. 



"Pheasants do not scratch like chickens, their bill takes the place of their feet. They will 

 even peck a hole through any moderate thickness of ice for water, and in the same manner 

 they dig out buttercup bulbs and insect larvae. They do not roost on the ground until__the 

 foliage leaves the trees, but spend the night high up among the branches where they are not 

 subject to the attacks of the predatory animals. Their most dreaded enemy is the western 

 homed owl. 



"With the ringneck pheasant the bright plumage of the males begins to appear about 

 the fourth month, and in eight months they are gorgeously plumed. The golden, silver and 

 Lady Amherst pheasants do not get full plumed tmtil the second year. The difference be- 

 tween the sexes is first noticed when the birds are about two months old — then the tail of the 

 male is the longer. Even when adult, it is hard to distinguish the different species of hen 

 pheasants, and only an expert can identify them. There is practically marked difference 

 between the female ringneck and the versicolor birds. 



"No, we don't confine our experiments to pheasants only. We consider it a great 

 favor when sportsmen send us a setting of eggs of some other game bird. In fact, at the pres- 

 ent time we have mixed in with our pheasants, scale partridges from southwestern United 

 States, California mountain partridge, valley partridge and the eastern bob- white. We have 

 had scale partridge and bob-whites build their nest and rear their young in captivity, and we 

 have incubated and reared large numbers of bob-whites. 



"Wild ducks' eggs hatch easily and the ducklings are pretty and interesting creatures. 

 The species that naturally feed upon wild rice, grain and seeds are easy to rear, but the fish- 

 eating kind are more difficult We have to clip or pinion their wings or they would migrate 

 south in the fall with other wild water fowl. 



"A friend of mine owned a flock of wild geese that he neglected to pinion, and one day 

 m the fall he had the pleasure of seeimg then mount high in the air and head for the South 



