94 NATURE AND WOODCRAFT. 



take daily journeys in search of beech-mast, 

 acorns, and blackberries, of which they con- 

 sume great quantities. When the wandered 

 birds find themselves in outlying copses in the 

 evening they are apt to roost there. And 

 herein lies the danger. The birds perch in 

 the low nut-bushes and underwood, and are 

 open to a whole host of enemies. The Sparrow- 

 hawk, flying its beat at late afternoon, makes 

 a swoop into the bushes and strikes down 

 its prey ; and a little later, as twilight comes, 

 the brown Wood-Owls do the same. For 

 months it has been the Keeper's chief concern 

 to keep these birds under. And if they are 

 destructive now, they were a dozen times more 

 so then. 



After hatching, and when the birds were 

 transferred to the coops, the Keeper and his 

 assistant spend the long summer days in feed- 

 ing and guarding them from the falcons. The 

 men lay hidden in scrub of oak, and birch, 

 and hazel, and watched the young pheasants 

 in the green rides. Small woodland birds 

 swarmed everywhere, and fed among the 

 pheasants ; but at the warning cry of the 

 Blackbird all the feathered throng dropped 



