The Common Pheasant 89 
attacking their own young, except in cases where they are unable to release them from 
difficult situations. It is, however, well known that hen Pheasants will often kill their 
chicks as soon as they are hatched. 
Mr. A. R. Micklefield of Stoke Ferry, Norfolk, who has had a lifelong experience 
among Pheasants, tells the following story : — 
"Young pheasants were constantly being picked up dead on his rearing- field near the 
coops, from no obvious reason ; so watch was kept, and an old barren hen pheasant was 
detected in the act of pecking them on the head. The assassin was shot, and the deaths 
then ceased." 
Domestic hens, too, will often kill young Pheasants placed under their charge. A 
correspondent in the Field, June 13, 1908, writes: — 
"I have put down this year about 2000 pheasant eggs, and the hens have hatched 
off as well as usual, averaging from thirteen to sixteen chicks each out of eighteen eggs 
in the nesting boxes. Only two hens hatched out seventeen out of the eighteen eggs, and 
it is a curious fact that both hatched off on the same day, and each hen immediately 
killed thirteen out of her seventeen live chicks by pecking their brains, and laid them in a 
row in front of her, each exactly in the same way. I shall be glad to know whether 
such a singular case has ever been noted before." 
The hen Pheasant has a curious habit as she comes off the nest, having just laid 
an egg. She walks along flicking bits of grass from side to side, throwing them over 
her back. Mr. Wormald tells us that he has seen wild ducks and reeves (female 
ruffs) do the same thing. 
Even after centuries of hand-rearing, the Pheasant declines to be anything but 
what it is, a wild bird ; and its wildness is apparent immediately it is released in field 
or cover. Individual birds, generally those that have suffered some injury, have been 
tamed until they have no fear of man, and are even apt to be troublesome, owing to 
their courage and familiarity. 
Mr. W. O. Meade-King gives an interesting account of a tame cock Pheasant in 
the pages of Country Life: — 
"My father put a sitting of pheasant's eggs under a hen," he says, "three years ago, of 
which this bird is the only surviving child, and owing to a slight malformation in his back he 
has rejoiced in the name of 'Humpy' all his life. Of any place in which he is living for 
the time being he takes absolute possession. Just at present he is lording it in the shrubbery 
near the house, and if any one dares to walk through the shrubbery he attacks them furiously, 
dashing backwards and forwards over their feet, pecking their boots and beating them with 
his wings and claws ; luckily his attacks are confined to this low level. At one time he took 
possession of the kitchen garden, a happy hunting-ground for him, it being a good size, over 
an acre, and surrounded by a high wall. Here he was particularly pugnacious, but never 
followed one out of the garden ; as soon as the intruder reached the door he would fly up on 
to the top of the wall, crow a crow of defiance, and then fly down again ready for the next 
comer. He knows my father well, and always comes when he is called ; but gratitude for the 
food given him every day is a negligible quantity ; nevertheless, he sees in my father a protector. 
He does not approve of guns or dogs, and last year, when my father and two friends were 
shooting partridges, the two latter undertook to walk a stubble-field, while my father waited for 
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