hONTHLY WILDLIFE RESEARCH LETTER 
Department of Conservation and Natural History Survey, Cooperating 
T. G. Scott, Editor 
Urbana, Illinois 
May 1959 
Vol. 2, No. 5 
W-30-R-12 R. F. Labisky 
Renesting by pheasant hens, following the disruption of a previously 
established nest, has been accepted as commonplace. Yet, actual evidence of 
renesting among wild pheasant hens is negligible. In order to investigate the 
occurrence of renesting in a wild population, the nests of 23 wild hens on the 
Sibley area were disrupted during June, 1957. The hens whose nests were dis¬ 
rupted were trapped on the nest, marked for individual recognition to enable 
identification during subsequent observations, and released. Four of the 23 
wild hens (17.14 per cent) were observed with a brood of chicks later in the 
summer; this evidence of renesting is considered conservative because some of 
the other hens in this group also may have reared broods but were not observed. 
If the nest success among the renesting hens was similar to the annual, over-all, 
nest success of nearly 3h per cent in 1957, it can be conjectured that in 
addition to the four hens that renested successfully, eight of the other hens 
in the group probably renested but were unsuccessful. These observations hypo¬ 
thetically suggest that about 50 per cent of the hens whose nests were disrupted 
did attempt to renest during the same summer. Although these data were limited 
by the small sample size, the findings provide positive evidence that renesting 
does occur in wild populations. 
W-U2-R-8 R. D. Lord 
The analysis of evidence from 291 rabbits collected monthly during 
1958 has resulted in the construction of a life table for Illinois cottontails 
employing age-specific reproductive and mortality rates. The construction of 
this life table shows that nearly 85 per cent of the rabbits born each summer, 
die during their* first 3 months. This fact points up the importance of good 
nesting cover for cottontails and the reason why fields of Erigeron and clover 
produce many rabbits each fall (such fields provide protective cover for the 
small weanlings while they are growing). 
Examination of 23 hair-mats (remains of dead rabbits) on the Allerton 
Park T-H Area showed that 8 contained shot pellets (table 1). 
OCT 9 1959 
NATURAL 
HISTORY SURVEY 
LIBRARY 
