7 Pheasants. 



foliage. The pheasant's next favourite roosting resort is the 

 Silver Spruce, and to this belongs every desirable quality 

 for the purpose, and were this species universally adopted 

 for pheasant-preserves, a great blow would be struck at 

 night -poaching. Ash, holly, and other trees are also freely 

 resorted to. Pheasants do not roost exactly in company, 

 side by side, yet not often widely apart, and where one 

 bird finds a suitable night's quarters, others are not far 

 distant from the spot. 



Just before the female pheasant commences the 

 preliminaries of her peculiar duties, she frequently leaves 

 the boughs at night and finds a roost on the ground, 

 generally ensconcing herself amongst some long grass at 

 the foot of a tree or beneath a shrub. About the same 

 time, or perhaps a little before, the male may also adjourn 

 to terra firma for his night's lodging. The pheasant is, 

 it is almost unnecessary to say, polygamous, each cock-bird 

 taking, when in an uninfluenced state, from three to five 

 hens under his care; but this of course regulates itself a 

 good deal according to the relative numerical superiority of 

 the hens. About the first or second week in March the 

 cock begins his search for mates, heralding the same by a 

 considerable amount of crowing, and showing increased 

 brilliancy of plumage and stateliness of mien, which 

 naturally excites the ire of other would-be cavaliers, the 

 result being a considerable number of battles royal for the 

 possession of the hens. The whole of the pheasant's 

 breeding operations take place on the ground, the nest 

 being a very simple arrangement, consisting of any suitable 

 circular depression, either in the ground proper, beneath a 

 bush or such similar hindrance to discovery ; or it may be 

 in long clover or grass, or in a clump of sedge or other 

 coarse herbage. Unfortunately, pheasants have a too 

 frequent fancy for nesting in long meadow-grass or clover ; 



