When catching up pheasants for the laying-pens, there is always the
difficulty of preventing their escape from the wire-net enclosures, and
it is interesting to see the different devices by which this trouble is
met. The enclosure must not be covered over with wire-netting, for the
birds, whenever startled, would fly upwards and injure themselves--and
it is wonderful with what perseverance a pheasant will fly up again and
again, until its pate has no skin left, and sometimes until it can fly
up no more. So the keeper sometimes covers the enclosure with string
netting, small enough to prevent the birds escaping, and large enough
to prevent them catching their heads and hanging themselves. Others
follow the hawker's system, called brailing, attaching Y-shaped pieces
of leather to one wing so that it cannot be opened for flight--or the
wing may be tied with a piece of tape. The wings are treated in this
way in turn, lest one should grow stiff through having no work.
Pheasants bred simply for stocking purposes are pinioned when small
birds, as are wild duck; but this reduces their value when their
egg-laying days are numbered. Some keepers cut the flight feathers
of one wing, but the birds cannot then fly again until the shortened
quills have moulted and new ones have grown. But a bird whose flight
feathers have been pulled out in the spring will grow fresh ones by
June, when she is turned out of the pen. At this time the bird with cut
wings is at a heavy disadvantage, alike in escaping the dangers and in
mothering any brood she may succeed in hatching out in the woods.
How shall a pheasant gather her chicks beneath her wings if she have
only a wing and a half?
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