250 
YERTEBBATA. 
The description of tlie habits of the common pheasant will serve, with little variation, for the 
whole gi-oup. Its favorite haunts are 
woods and thickets, always in the 
neighborhood of water, and it fre- 
quently takes to marshy islands, over- 
grown with rushes or osiers. In the 
summer the pheasants roost on the 
ground, bnt during the latter part of 
the autumn and winter they pass the 
night upon trees. They feed upon 
grain and seeds of various kinds, inter- 
mixed with fruits, blackberries, sloes, 
haws, acorns, green herbage, roots, and 
insects. In their movements they 
closely resemble the common fowl, 
walking and running in the same man- 
ner, and with great swiftness — in fact, 
rarely taking wing unless pressed with 
immediate danger. They are polyga- 
mous, and the males and females only 
associate during the breeding season, 
which is in the spring. At this time 
the males, wliich have kept together 
during the winter, separate, eacli taking 
up a particular station, where he col- 
lects a number of females round him, 
by strutting about, clapping his wings, 
and crowing. The females deposit from 
ten to fourteen eggs among long grass 
or bushes, the nest consisting merely of 
a small hollow lined with dried leaves; 
they are then deserted by the male, 
and the whole labor of incubation and bringing up the young brood is left entirely to them. In 
THE KING-NECKED PHEASANT, 
THE COMMON PHEASANT OF EUROPE. 
