When the oaks shed their leaves night has a new danger for the roosting
pheasants. They become easy targets for the gun of the night shooter.
While the leaves remain the pheasants are well screened--and they
often owe their lives to their habit of roosting in oaks, where the
leaves give shelter long after beeches are bare. On a night of bright
moonshine beeches scarcely provide any cover for the bulky form of
a roosting pheasant. No doubt it is rather for comfort than through
cunning that pheasants choose a roosting-place in oaks. They show no
cunning in choosing their oak-tree, for they will roost night after
night on some low branch overhanging a road. They seem naturally to
prefer oaks to beeches for a lodging. Unlike most trees, oaks throw
out their branches horizontally, but beeches' branches tend to rise
vertically. Their bark is smooth and cold, but oak bark is rough,
easily gripped, and warm.
When oaks have lost all their leaves the beeches provide the better
cover; for their vertical lines form some sort of screen. Even with
a full moon it is not always easy to see sleeping pheasants which go
to roost in the lower branches. It may be more difficult to see a
roosting pheasant than to shoot it--though the hardest shot a pheasant
can give is when it flies by night. Fir-trees in a pheasant covert
have a special value to the roosting birds. While unsuitable as
sleeping-places, for the birds cannot fly up through the thick twiggy
branches, nor can they see where they are going, the firs make the
more suitable roosting-trees warm and cosy, and against their dark
background it is difficult to see the pheasants, and to shoot them. The
poacher has no liking for sporting shots.
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