92
Concord, Mass.
1913.
Aug. 26
to
Nov. 13.
(No 43)

  103. Phasianus torquatus. - The increase of Pheasants throughout
the Concord Region has been not less marked than general within
the past two years. In and about our Farm they literally swarmed
this autumn, especially early in the season. Towards its close I
saw much less of them, possibly because they then retired more
into dense covert although the frequency with the reports of guns
were heard early in the morning at the rear of a neighbors house
led me to suspect that many a bird may have been illicitly
slain there by him or some one else. Throughout the autumn they
fed at morning and evening well out in open grass fields and
weed-grown cultivated lands spending the warmer hours of the
day in bordering woods and thickets to which they also resorted
to spend the night usually in the tops of bushy young white
pines fifteen or twenty feet in height. To several such trees in
our Berry Pasture they came very regularly not long after
sunset often flying to them from rather far off in the fields