The keeper may control the supply of hand-reared birds: he may make
up for the spoiling of an egg, or the loss of a chick, which would
otherwise mean a pheasant the less; but he has no control over the
season as it affects wild birds. What he prays for is a showery April,
with a sun to shine between the storms. And he wants fair weather after
the middle of May, the longer the better. A bright warm summer is good
for all pheasants, whether it be their fate to start life beneath a
fowl in a stuffy, if cosy, coop, or to be gathered beneath the breast
and wings of their real mother in the wood, or among the corn. A fine
summer means more to birds than to man, for to them it is a matter of
life or death.
* * * * *