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Pheasant — This game bird was introduced several centuries 
ago from Persia. It has become to a degree naturalized, but there 
arc, however, many thousands reared annually by hand to stock the 
game preserves for purposes of sport. The Pheasant is a hand- 
some bird, rich in colouration, with a long and graceful tail, and 
to its protection more than to any other cause is due the 
extinction of several species of our birds of prey, and of great 
diminution in the numbers of the others. The young of the Pheasant 
are somewhat defenceless, and afford an irresistible attraction to the 
Sparrow-Hawk. From the point of view of the gamekeeper and of 
certain sportsmen big bags are the one and only aim, but to the 
general lover of nature it is questionable whether the big battues 
which we see recorded as each season comes round, are an adequate 
return for the extinction of certain species of our raptorial birds, and 
the diminished numbers of many other grand birds, such as say the 
Peregrine Falcon. The nest of the Pheasant is a rude affair, built 
upon the ground in a clump of grass or bracken, and contains from 
eight to ten eggs, of a buff colour, unspotted. Large numbers of 
pheasants are annually reared from eggs placed beneath domestic 
fowls and in incubators, and these chicks are hand-fed by the keeper 
and his assistants up to the shooting season. The change from 
this daily act of kindness to the sudden and widely extended 
slaughter which takes place when the shooting season comes round 
must be somewhat incomprehensible to the fowl. 
Pipit, Meadow — The Meadow-Pipit, or Tit-Lark is common and 
widely distributed over thewholeofthe British Isles. In appearance 
it resembles the Skylark, but is smaller in size and darker in colour. 
It is pre eminently the small bird of the moorland, where it nests, 
carefully concealing its eggs within the shelter of a tussock of grass. 
The eggs, four or five in number, are of a dull bluish-white in ground- 
colour, but are so thickly besprinkled with spots and freckles of 
greyish-brown as to leave the ground-colour barely visible. This is 
the bird in whose nest the cuckoo frequently places its egg ; and it is 
indeed an incongruous sight, that of the two Tit- Larks feeding the 
young monster palmed off upon them, which, even before fully grown, 
is in bulk much larger than both its foster parents together. This 
species is much preyed on by the Merlin, to whose dash, in the 
absence of cover on the moor, it falls a somewhat easy victim. While 
resident with us throughout the year, it descends during the w inter 
months from the high moorland to lower-lying and less inhospitable 
parts. 
Owl, White or Barn This species is unfortunately becoming 
much more uncommon than was the case even ten years ago. No 
bird is a greater friend to man than the Owl, waging as it does, a 
constant warfare against the mouse and rat, on which two rodents it 
chiefly feeds. It, however, has had the sad fate of arousing the some- 
what ready suspicion of the game-keeper, who in many cases ruth- 
lessly destroys all owls which come before him. The game-keeper's 
idea is, that the owl is an enemy to his young pheasants, and it may 
be that occasionally a member of the owl family may “ go wrong/' 
and err in this respect, but when one learns of an owl being shot 
because it was “ seen fluttering near the pheasant coops," and finds 
that a closer inspection reveals the presence of both rats and mice, 
which frequent such spots to feed upon the pheasants’ food, the con- 
jecture that a missing young pheasant may have been accounted for 
by a rat, and that the presence of the owl is in direct relation to the 
presence of the rodents, surely may reasonably present itself, while 
the ejected pellets of indigestible matter around the ow l's nest, most 
usually consist of the fur and tones of rats and mice ; only but seldom 
