It is not certain whether pheasants are indigenous to this country. It
is known that they were cultivated by the Romans as domesticated, or
semi-domesticated birds, and as remains of pheasants have been found in
towns or camps of the Romans in Britain, it is assumed that those people
introduced the birds into Britain. It will be observed that the idea
rests upon the fact that the pheasants were not indigenous to Italy. But
Italy is to Europe what India is to Asia, the most southerly country,
and pheasants do not like low latitudes. The races of pheasant most
allied to our own cross bred are found from Asia Minor right across the
Continent to Japan, and it is quite possible that the Western race
extended across Central Europe to England. Obviously a strip of ocean is
no bar in Asia, and it is not likely to have been so in Europe,
especially as it is said that once the ocean did not flow between
Britain and the Continent. The first feast of English pheasants
mentioned in history occurred in the time of King Harold. The old
English pheasant, as we must call the bird which preceded by 1000 or
2000 or as many million years the introduction of the Chinese race into
England, was a red bird upon the back and the upper tail coverts, and it
had no white ring round its neck. The Chinese pheasant, on the other
hand, had the band of white and greenish colouring on the back and upper
tail coverts, and what we have done by mixing green and red together is
precisely what an artist does with those two colours. He produces some
shade of neutral tint. Consequently, our cock pheasants are only
handsome from coloration in regard to the necks and heads and the
breasts, which the crossing has not damaged. The present desire to cross
with birds that have white wing coverts, namely the Mongolian race, is
liable to mix colours very much more. However beautiful a pure white may
be and is, it has a very bad effect on the colours of fowls and ducks.
White crossing has produced barndoor fowls of every hideous mixture, and
the farm-pond duck with its washed-out feathering, which when compared
with that of the Rouen and the wild duck suffers by the contrast. The
Prince of Wales pheasant, the Mongolian, and even the Japanese
versicolor pheasants, are handsome birds, and may be desirable as pure
races, but any intermixtures of blood can only take place with the risk
of spoiling the glory of the cock pheasant’s plumage. The same remark
may be applied to crosses with the Reeves pheasant, which are much more
difficult to bring about, because the cross-bred birds only appear to
come to maturity in their third year, so that there is little danger;
for sportsmen want early maturity before all things in the pheasant pens
and coverts, where an immature cock bird would spell disaster.
[Illustration:
PHEASANTS AT WARTER PRIORY. LORD LONDESBOROUGH AT HIGH CLIFF
]
The system of penning pheasants as we employ it came to us from France;
without its aid we never should have succeeded in making the enormous
bags that are now the fashion. One thousand birds in the day are now
more often killed than 50 were a hundred years ago, and there are some
places where the host tries to quadruple the 1000, and nearly succeeds.
But the author finds that the general opinion is that 1000 really tall,
fast birds is enough for anybody, and that when more are killed, and
especially when great numbers are desired, the birds are not usually
driven in a fashion to afford those difficult marks that are above all
desired by both bad and good marksmen.
The general way of starting to preserve pheasants is to buy eggs from
game farmers. The usual price is from £5 to 10s. a hundred, according to
the time of year. The early eggs are much the most valuable, and for
them is the most demand. But eggs early in April run many risks that
those of early May escape. That is to say, the eggs may be frosted in
the pens, and the chicks may suffer from a combination of cold and wet,
when either one or the other alone would not injure. At the same time,
it is always unwise to set up theory when nature is offering us free
education. The survival of the fittest has evolved a bird that begins to
lay generally about the 7th or 14th of April; that begins to incubate
from about May 1st to the 7th, and to hatch out from about May 24th to
1st of June. Obviously this is because birds hatched much later than
this have died out in natural surroundings, probably from being unable
to stand our winters in their immature state of plumage. No doubt, also,
eggs laid much before the earlier date have not produced chicks in
sufficient numbers to alter the habits of the birds. Various kinds of
forcing can be made to extend the breeding period at both ends, but
there is a desire to increase the number of pheasants reared by their
own mothers in the wild state, and there is every reason to believe that
forcing of any sort would reduce the proportion of hen pheasants capable
of raising a good brood in the open fields. They are not very
successful, and the reason that has generally been accepted is that they
are bad mothers, and go wandering aimlessly on as long as a single chick
is left to follow. As a matter of fact this is not the reason. The young
partridges and wild ducks in the rearing-fields leave the coops and hunt
for food in broods, but the young pheasant hunts, or rather wanders,
each for itself, careless of the presence of its fellows. This is how it
happens that in the wild state the hen pheasant cannot shepherd her
chicks. She cannot, like them, be everywhere at once. So the
thunderstorm finds many young unprotected by the mother’s wing; the
hawks and the crows have no mother to beat off before they can dine on
young pheasants, which they have only to find alone in order to kill
with ease. But the worst enemy to young pheasants is long wet ground
vegetation. They have to run about in it to get their natural food, and
if it were not for the frequent recurrence of the mother’s brooding wing
they would perish of cold. In the rearing-fields the constant changes of
young birds from one coop and foster-mother to another show how often
death would overtake the lost birds were there not a house of call at
every few yards. Obviously any cross bred that has the instinct to hunt
for food in broods or collectively, and not in units, would greatly
assist in the spread and increase of wild reared birds. In the absence
of any such sort, improvement only seems to be possible by means of
natural selection, or the survival of the birds that do not get lost in
the wet herbage, and in breeding from them in preference to those that
have been reared by hand. But land varies so much, that large broods,
say, at Euston in Suffolk, would not prove that the same birds could
have reared a brood in the clays of Buckinghamshire or Middlesex. Sandy
soil is much the best for game, not only because water does not stand on
the soil, but because for some reason the vegetation dries up so quickly
after a wetting. It is not the wet that falls on the chick’s back that
does the damage, but that which he brushes from the grass as he walks
through it.
All questions of colour would have to give way before any difference of
habits that would make rearing easier than it is. There is no reason why
pheasants should cost more to rear than wild ducks and farmyard
chickens, except that they are more delicate. Instead of being fed upon
meal of kinds, they have to be supplied with hard-boiled egg, new-milk
custard made with egg, or flesh, or blood, in their early stages.
Breadcrumbs supply all the early necessities of the barndoor fowl, and
the farther we go in pampering the farther we shall have to go. The farm
poultry in wild nature lived greatly upon insects, just as the wild
pheasant does now. It is to make up for the absence of insects that so
much nitrogenous food is given to the pheasant chick, but as none is
supplied to the domestic poultry it appears likely that pheasants kept
as poultry are now reared would in a few generations become as hardy and
easy, because those that could not stand it would die out. A race of
pheasants entirely meal-fed would be of the greatest possible value.
Doubtless the losses at first would be heavy, for the pheasant in nature
lives neither on corn nor seeds in its early life. When it is hatched in
June, all the seeds of the previous year have grown into plants, and
none of that year’s plants will have ripe seeds for a month or more. So
that when theorists tell gamekeepers that they should give canary seed,
and thus return to a state of natural management, they are advising the
most unnatural management possible; but, all the same, a very convenient
one, if it could be done.
The present most accepted method of feeding hand-reared pheasants is to
start them on finely grated hard-boiled egg or custard; in the second
stage, to give the latter mixed with fine-ground dry meal, in order to
stiffen the custard and render it capable of crumbling. From this stage
the birds go on by degrees to receive more meal and less custard, until
the time comes to feed them upon boiled oatmeal and boiled rice, as the
state of their bowels require a slight alterative. The oatmeal is
relaxing, and the rice just the reverse. From this point to crushed
wheat is a long jump, because the latter is not boiled and the two
former are. However, to make the consistency of the boiled food more
breakable and less sticky, fine flour or oatmeal uncooked will for some
time have been shaken into it as the cooked food is pressed through a
fine-mesh metal sieve. The object of this is to prevent the food having
a stick-jaw tendency, and thus remaining and drying upon the beaks,
backs, and legs of the birds. The usual practice is to place the food
upon a board for the chicks and to wash the board frequently. There is a
possibility that a quick way of spreading disease, when once it exists
on the rearing-field, is to throw about food on the ground. There it
mixes with the excreta of the birds, and is a possible although unproved
source of contamination. Dr. Klein proved that fowl enteritis was spread
in that manner, and perhaps pheasants take their well-known disease in
the same way; but this has never been investigated by a bacteriologist,
and the constant assertions that pheasant enteric is the same disease as
fowl enteritis is no more than a guess, and one that is very unlikely to
be correct. If it were so, the foster-mothers would be sure to die when
the pheasant chicks take the enteric disease and die off in large
numbers: only one authentic case of the foster-mothers having died from
fowl enteritis has been reported. Then the chicks remained healthy.
Fowls nearly always remain healthy when 50 per cent. of the pheasants
die off. The foster-mothers in the coops will require water, and it
should be boiled water given cold. It is not possible to leave water in
the pans and prevent the young birds drinking it, so that every
precaution has to be taken that the water does not introduce disease.
But the chicks will not require much other liquid than that contained in
their cooked food. A large proportion of the food given after the first
fortnight should be green vegetable, given cooked or raw, according to
the quality, or both, according to the appreciation of it by the birds.
Green food and insects are natural pheasant foods in the summer, when
the birds are young, and there is no reason why they should be deprived
of one because they cannot get the other. Enormous numbers of insects
are always in the trees of the coverts, and it was a habit of James
Mayes, when keeper to the late Maharajah Duleep Singh, to remove his
birds into covert the instant they began to look ill. He told the author
that he saved them by this means, and as mature and immature insects
drop in numbers from the trees probably the change back to natural
feeding recovered the lost condition.
Of course pheasants will eat ants’ eggs greedily; they would probably
grow healthy and strong on this food alone, just as partridges will. But
the insects do not exist in sufficient numbers to feed as many pheasants
as are reared. Whether some few ants’ eggs might be safely given to
pheasants the author does not know, but partridges must either be wholly
or not at all fed upon them. The birds will not look at anything else if
they can get some ants’ eggs, although the numbers are not enough to
keep them. It is usual to try to do without this food, and only to
employ it in case birds are off their feed and require a “pick-me-up.”
Young sparrows will feed upon the ants themselves, but small partridges
only take the eggs. This causes much more of the food to be required,
and although it is generally free food, the labour necessary to get
enough makes the free food very much the most expensive.
The kind of pheasant pen required for the birds to winter in is a large
one—the larger the better. The number of birds wintering in it must be
left to the judgment of the individual. It should be of grass, and so
large that the birds’ constant treadings do not destroy the growth. A
level piece of ground without shelter is to be avoided. Dry banks,
bushes, and basking and dusting mounds, as well as a heap of grit, are
desirable.
Some people have had good results by leaving the birds in a pen of this
sort to lay, and have found that a number of cocks amongst five times as
many hens have not destroyed all chances of success by their fighting.
But the usual plan is to make small pens large enough for each to
contain five hens and a cock. Pens of 4 yards by 10, and 6 feet high,
made of wire netting, are big enough, but they cannot be too large for
the health of the birds, and as they last many years without removal, if
the ground is dug up and limed at the end of each laying season, the
expense of the first building is spread over fifteen or twenty years.
These pens are most cheaply made in close contact, for then two of the
sides will serve a double purpose, for each will be a boundary for two
pens. For 3 feet upwards from the ground the pens should either be
turfed or made of corrugated iron, in order to afford shelter and
prevent war with neighbours.
Another kind of laying pen most approved of late years, although success
came before its invention, is that of the movable pen. These pens need
not be more than a couple of feet high, but they have to be covered
over, whereas if the birds have one wing brailed this is not necessary
with the other kind of pen. Full-winged pheasants damage themselves
seriously by flying against the wire netting roof of a pen, and even
when roofs are made of string netting the shock birds receive on impact
must be nearly as bad as those that kill netted grouse upon the same
kind of netting. The object of these small light movable pens is to give
the birds fresh ground every day. But the moving must be an enormous
undertaking where many pheasants are kept, and it is conceivable that
those who sell half a million eggs in the year, and want 5000 pens for
the purpose, do not move them very often.
After birds have begun to lay in March and April, the next stage is to
place the eggs under hens in sitting boxes. These are of two kinds:
boxes in which the front opens out to a small wired-in network enclosure
in which the foster-mother can feed when she is inclined; and the other
sort, in which the only opening is from the top lid (which both kinds
have), and from which the incubating broody has to be lifted by hand and
then tethered to a peg while she feeds and waters. This is a tedious
process when there may be from 500 to 1500 hens to treat every day. It
is generally believed that the best kind of nest is one made upon the
bare earth under these sitting boxes. That may very well be where there
are no rats, but where this kind of vermin exists the author prefers a
false bottom of turf to the boxes, with a real bottom of small mesh wire
netting, which in no way interferes with the benefit eggs derive from
moistened mother earth, but effectually prevents losses from rats,
stoats, moles, and hedgehogs, although the latter would not be likely to
make subterranean visits in any case.
The pheasant coop is another article of furniture the preserver cannot
get on without. It is quite a light, simple, and handy contrivance, with
a backwards slanting roof, three boarded sides, no bottom, and a sparred
front, the centre bar being movable—that is, sliding upwards through the
roof. These pens are set out in the rearing-field before the eggs hatch.
That ensures the birds being brought from the nests to dry ground. For a
few days the chicks have to be protected from themselves, and prevented
from running away from their foster-parents. This is best done by the
use of two boards about 6 inches high, which are placed so as to form a
triangle with the opening of the coop as its base. Then the coop must be
very well ventilated, for it has to have a shutter, one that is always
closed at night, and the young birds are best not allowed to wander
about in wet grass before the dew is off in the morning, so that they
sometimes have to be fed, and then again shut up until the morning sun
has done its work, but this is only when they are very young.
The field chosen for laying pens, as a matter of human choice, differs
greatly from the ground the pheasant prefers. The latter is bog ground
for feeding in, and also very frequently the dry grass patches or
tussocks in the bog for laying upon, and only the coverts for roosting.
Human judgment not being able to supply all these in one small confined
place, compromises by supplying neither, and giving a dry, sloping,
sunny, sheltered, but treeless bare ground patch of earth, often turf in
the beginning, but bare earth before the termination of the laying
season.
There are many other methods of providing for the wants of pheasants,
some of which cannot be recommended. There is no space to mention all,
and therefore the writer is obliged to confine his remarks to those he
believes to be the best, and those he has known to succeed up to
expectations. But a few remarks are perhaps necessary about some of
them. For instance, the plan of having laying pens moved annually is
good if suitable space can be spared. Wattle hurdles have been used to
make these cheap movable pens of all sizes. But they are objectionable
for small pens, as likely to keep the sun off the ground without keeping
the draught out. Indeed, they are very draughty affairs, and pheasants
hate wind, and do not succeed without sun. In order to successfully use
wattle hurdles of 6 feet square, the ground should be large enough to
fully benefit by the morning sun’s ray when at an angle of less than 30
degrees. Then, in order to keep out the draught, it is useful to convert
the bottom 2 feet of the hurdles into wattle and daub. This has the
misfortune of making them rather heavy to move about.
For years the annual digging up process was carried on with success at
Sandringham.
In order to prevent insects from infesting the sitting hens, it is good
to have dusting sheds, and occasionally to remove the hens to these.
Slacked lime and earth kept dry under cover is the best material for
this purpose, but if it is necessary the same results can be attained by
the use of plenty of insect powder in the nests.
Pheasants in laying pens rarely get enough green stuff. It is for this
that daily movable pens are the best, because they allow the pheasants
to get grass shoots, which, however, are not the most suitable kind of
green food. Onions, lettuce, cabbage, turnip tops, turnips themselves,
and apples are all useful; but if the grass is full of clover none of
these will be necessary. Naturally everything depends upon the quality
of the grass and whether the birds eat it or not. Boiled nettles are
useful, but vegetable is best given to old birds uncooked, except when
potatoes are used. They have been known to eat the fresh uncurled
sprouts of the bracken, but the pheasant farmer who relied on this kind
of food would not be likely to make his fortune. Fresh smashed-up bone
seems to be necessary for the well-being of laying birds, and of course
grit—that is, small gravel, and if this has its origin in the seashore
it will probably contain enough shell of sea-fish to make a supply of
bone unnecessary.
The choice of food for penned pheasants will depend largely upon
prejudice and circumstance. Of necessity grain of some kind will be the
stand-by. If it is desired to keep the same hen pheasants for laying for
several years, but little Indian corn will be employed in the best
regulated establishments. It does not matter that this food, like
acorns, spoils the flavour of the flesh, but it does matter that the
birds become too fat inside for health. Probably the first season they
do not show a loss of egg productiveness, but later they do. Maize in
the coverts, to keep the birds at home when they scramble for food in
every field, is less objectionable than for birds that do not get much
exercise and live in want of it. Barley, oats, beans, peas, and wheat
are all useful in turn; and besides, as the breeding season comes on, a
warm breakfast of cooked oat or barley meal is useful. Greaves are
remnants from the soap boilers’, and are not very reliable foods; but if
_fresh_ meat can be obtained, a little of it stewed to rags in the water
in which the food is afterwards cooked is distinctly useful in
egg-producing time, but is not necessary then, and certainly is not so
at any other period after the birds are half grown. At the same time, to
make up for the absence of slugs to the penned pheasant, the author
would always give a little if it could be cheaply obtained. Very little
in the way of animal food comes amiss to the wild pheasant, which has
been known to eat mice, wire worms by the thousand, slugs of all sorts,
snails with shells and snails without, frogs, blind worms, and young
vipers.
The greatest misfortune about penned pheasants is that they take no
exercise. As gallinaceous birds they ought to scratch for a living, and
that is difficult to arrange in movable pens on turf. It is quite
possible that they would be more healthy upon ploughed fields,
especially if a part of their daily grain was raked in before they were
removed to the fresh ground, but in that case they would lose the
plucking of grass and clover.
Pens with open tops and birds with one wing clipped have been
recommended in order that the wild cocks should visit the penned hens,
but whether it has ever succeeded or is merely a pretty theory the
author is not aware: he does know that it has often failed, and
infertile eggs have been the consequence.
It is questionable whether the cocks go to the hens as much as is
believed. In the author’s experience of pheasants, it has been the hens
that have been attracted by the crowing of the cocks. He has known newly
established laying pens to draw hen pheasants in numbers to ground that
they never before nested upon. Whether they would have entered the pens
if they had been open at the top is doubtful, but many of them laid
outside and had infertile eggs. After all, what is the crow given to the
cock for if he cannot make any use of it?
There is some difference of opinion as to whether most success follows
the incubation of pen produced or of wood produced eggs.
This is only to be answered with reservations. There is no doubt that 90
per cent. of fairly early eggs from well kept penned birds will be
fertile. There are two reasons against as large a proportion from home
covert birds. First, the latter are picked up less often, and run more
risk from night frosts. Second, you may leave a large proportion of
cocks and yet lose most of them by their straying off for miles with
favourite hens.
Mr. Tegetmeier, in his book on Pheasants, has collected evidence from
all quarters, and he gives many good reasons for not reducing the cocks
below a proportion of one to three hens. Mr. Millard has lately
expressed very strong views against leaving fewer than eight hens to one
wild cock. But perhaps Mr. Millard’s life, in connection with game-meal,
is not precisely that which would endow him with the most reliable
information from all directions. Be this as it may, it is within the
experience of the author that when one cock to five hens has been his
accomplished aim, he has had the satisfaction of seeing straying
pheasants in every part of an estate all breeding good broods, but the
disappointment of knowing that every cock had left the home covert and
that many hens were laying infertile eggs there. Probably there are
limits to the distance a hen bird will go to the crow of a cock. Here
was a case in which not one egg per cent. was good in the covert, but
out in the fields a mile or two away it was quite different. Every egg
was fertile and produced its chick.
The coverts are not really natural places for pheasants to lay in, any
more than they are for partridges. Generally, when pheasants begin to
lay the fields have too little covert to tempt them to make nests in the
open. Then they resort to the hedgerows, and when these are scarce, as
they are in the stone wall districts, many more birds lay in the coverts
than would do so if there was vegetation outside. However, in a stone
wall and partridge country, the author has seen as many pheasants’ as
partridges’ nests mown out of the Italian rye grass and clover-fields.
But these were late birds, because this mowing rarely begins before June
15th, and many pheasants have hatched out before then. If it could be
planned that all the pheasants left could be prevented from straying,
then fewer cocks would possibly do, and this might occur in a grass
country. But in a corn district the birds will stray, and when half the
cocks have departed, as they will with one or two hens to each, those
left would not have the proportion of hens aimed at; but where three
hens were attempted to be left to each cock, and two of them went away
with each of half the males, the other males left behind would have four
hens each; where five hens were designed, the real proportion in the
cover would be eight hens to a cock; and where the design was to leave
eight hens, the real proportion would be fourteen hens to a cock after
the strayers had left in similar proportions.
It may be replied that keepers should prevent straying, but, on the
contrary, it is just what is wanted, and it has come to be the best and
most fashionable preservation to encourage it.
Those who know best act in the belief that every cock pheasant that gets
away with one or two hens will become the sire of one or two good
broods, and they know, too, that those that remain with many more in
coverts have not the breeding instinct fully developed, and that if they
have chicks the competition for natural food will be too great for the
welfare of any. In other words, the old birds will eat up the insect
life before the chicks come.
Pheasant preservers have in their minds the preservation at Lord
Leicester’s, at Holkham, in Norfolk; that also at Euston, the Duke of
Grafton’s, in Suffolk; that at Beaulieu, in Hampshire, and have become
aware that with proper encouragement on suitable land the wild reared
pheasant is enough of itself, and on any land a great assistance to the
game stock.
The most noted success has occurred at Euston, where about 6000 wild
pheasants have been shot in a season. This is the most noted, because
the system adopted there advanced game preserving in general by one
step.
The advance occurred in this way. When the Duke of Grafton succeeded to
the property, he told Blacker the keeper to stop the hand rearing of
pheasants. The keeper, however, begged for, and obtained, a compromise.
This was, that he might have hens under which to place eggs removed from
pheasants’ nests in danger, until he could find other pheasants’ nests
in which to place them. It has resulted, in practice, in keeping eggs
until the shell-chipping stage under the domestic hens, and then in
placing them under pheasants having their own eggs in the same state of
incubation. This has succeeded in producing big hatchings of pheasants,
many more than the birds would lay eggs in the ordinary course. But the
Duke of Grafton has denied that bad or dummy eggs have been used at
Euston, and consequently, although Blacker pointed the way, he did not
consummate the latest phase of pheasant preservation, in which all the
birds’ eggs are removed as laid, and are incubated under hens, while the
female pheasant is kept sitting on “clear” eggs, in order to be ready to
take a big batch of chipped eggs as soon as they are ready.
The object of this plan is that if the bird is killed, or is made to
give up sitting by bad weather, the eggs are nevertheless not injured,
but are merely passed on to be divided amongst other birds.
It has been said that there is no advantage in this plan, but one cannot
help thinking that only lazy keepers and their friends who sell game
foods would say so.
The argument is that the nests are not in danger from foxes until just
at the time of hatching. It is said that the birds lose their scent when
incubating, and that only when the chicks break the shell is there any
scent from the nests. As a matter of fact there is very little scent
from breeding birds whether they are sitting or laying, but to say there
is none, and that foxes cannot find them, is a total mistake.
Nests are taken by dogs and foxes, and by hedgehogs and rats, at all
times of the incubating period. If the birds gave out as much scent as
they do at other periods, there would be _no_ nests left in a fox
country. But nature and the birds, between them, do defeat the foxes and
the vermin in a fair proportion of cases. It has been affirmed that
incubating alters their system, and that the scent that before passed
out through the skin passes out with the excreta when the birds
incubate. That is to say, that there is a total change of system brought
about by the change of instinct. The stronger scent from the excreta of
sitting birds has been advanced as a proof of this. The author will not
discuss this theory or deny it, but he is certain that the whole loss of
scent can be accounted for in another way. There is perhaps a change of
scent in breeding creatures. To explain this, in a doubtful way, it has
been affirmed that in gestation the superfluous essence of a beast finds
a use in being drained by the blood to the embryo.
In birds, however, if they are discovered off the nest, your pointer
will frequently point them, but will not be able to do so when they are
upon their eggs. The pointer is not a close hunter like the fox, the
terrier, or the sheep-dog, all of which occasionally find too many
sitting birds. But that which most negatives the change of system theory
in birds are two facts. One, that off the nests to feed the birds have
scent; and the other is, that at any time of the year the birds have
power to withhold their scent by merely crouching tight to mother earth,
holding in their feathers and remaining motionless. The author has been
one of a party when the best dogs then in existence totally failed to
find a wounded grouse. Then it was resolved to lunch, and dogs were
dropped or coupled up where they were. Towards the end of lunch, one of
the dogs was observed to be pointing downwards with its nose not 6
inches from the ground upon which lay the wounded grouse. That is to
say, it had remained immovable and _scentless_ within a yard of these
crack dogs for more than half an hour. These dogs were the very best
amongst the most successful field trial winners of the time, and to
doubt that they had remarkable noses would seem absurd if their names
were mentioned. Some of them had won by finding game 100 yards over the
backs of their competitors. But there was absolutely _no_ scent from
that bird until it became exhausted. Nor is this unusual. A falcon
generally, and an artificial kite sometimes, will make unwounded birds
crouch like this, and they too will often give out no scent whatever. At
other times dogs will be only able to detect the foot scents made before
the birds were scared into close lying. If there could be any doubt
about the noses of the dogs the author has shot over, he would not dare
to write like this; but the best dog men of the present time will, he
knows, support him when he says there never have been better nosed ones.
Consequently, it is affirmed that birds can not only reduce their scent
at will, but _wholly suppress_ it, for a time at any rate. They can only
do this when motionless, and this seems a sufficient explanation of why
all birds are not found on the nests by foxes and vermin. The greater
difficulty seems to be to discover why so many are found; but as even
Jove sometimes nods, it may be that the partridge and the pheasant does
so too, and the slightest movement appears to be fatal when scent means
death. One thing it is difficult to explain: How is it that the breath
does not betray the presence of the game? The otter can be hunted down
the river by the bubbles of breath that rise from him. The submerged
moorhen and wounded duck can be unerringly found by the dog in the same
way and by the same means. Is it possible that birds can subsist without
breathing for periods that would be fatal to ourselves? The author
expresses no opinion, but there is a total absence of scent upon
occasion to account for; this entire absence is rare either during
incubation or at other times.
Those who think there is no advantage to be derived from removing the
eggs into safety during incubation, say that there is no danger because
there is no scent. Yet one of them at least, namely Mr. Millard, advises
the use of Renardine to prevent the danger which scent causes.
Mr. Alington, the author of _Partridge Driving_, describes how
Renardine, the preparation in which Mr. Millard is interested, was
effective in keeping off foxes from the partridges’ nests one year, but
was actually the attraction to them the next. Mr. Holland Hibbert had a
similar experience. Mr. J. Geddies, of Collin, Dumfries, wrote to one of
the papers recounting similar misfortunes. There have been plenty of
letters written by keepers giving contrary views, but probably the
papers have exercised a wise discretion in not publishing them. It would
be unusual if the makers could not get testimonials from a number of
their clients, and they certainly would not ask those to state their
opinions who were dissatisfied.
We have to remember that Messrs. Gilbertson & Pages’ representative
would not be commercial if he were impartial, and that the spread of
what is called the Euston system would obviate the necessity at once for
Renardine and for the more important and more useful game foods sold by
the firm named above.
Another objection to protecting nests by evil-smelling substances or
liquids is, that men can smell them too, and if it took a fox a year to
know that a peculiar sensation to his olfactory nerves meant partridge,
it would not take a reasoning being a day to do so. Indeed, with this
guide to nests, the stealing of eggs could be conducted by night as well
as it is now by day. Another so-called prevention of foxes consists in
small pieces of metal covered with luminous paint, but this again is
open to precisely the same human objection as the other.
Scent is very little understood, but there is no reason why a
non-smelling volatile substance should not be discovered some day that
will combine with the volatile essence of game and neutralise it, just
as the scent of ozone is neutralised in the presence of carbonic acid
gas. Ozone is only oxygen in a peculiar molecular form. When one atom
amalgamates with the carbonic acid, the others become simple oxygen
again, and as part of the air have no scent. An essence that will act in
some such way towards the scent of sitting birds appears to be desirable
in the interests of game and foxes. But even if it were discovered, it
would do nothing to save the nests in heavy rain, when every depression
in the ground is flooded, and when partridges, grouse, and pheasants are
forced to abandon incubation.
It is difficult to suggest when precisely it was discovered that
partridges would permit themselves to be interfered with upon the nest.
The credit has been given to Marlow, Lord Ashburton’s keeper at The
Grange. The author has no reason to dispute the credit, which is
probably properly bestowed. At any rate, Marlow made Hampshire famous
for partridges, and for years held the record for a day’s as also for a
three days’ bag, and but for hand rearing at Houghton he would have held
it for four days also, and _entirely without hand rearing_. This is not
the place to discuss partridges, except for the fact that the use of
dummy and clear eggs for those birds has been erroneously attributed to
Euston. Really it was an advance, and a very great advance, on the
Euston plan. But pheasants have been handled on the nests by careful and
clever keepers for many years, although it appears to be only recently
that it has come to be known that partridges could also be treated
familiarly, if proper precautions were taken. The principal of these is
not to attempt to touch the nest with the bird upon it until she has
been sitting close for three days at least, and then to make no sudden
movement when approaching or handling the nest. If these points are
attended to, the bird will not leave her nest far, if she leaves it at
all, and will soon come back upon the retreat of her supposed enemy.
But whether this system of egg preservation is partially practised or
the eggs are wholly left to chance, they should all be marked, either
with indelible or invisible ink. The former plan is of the most use in
preventing egg-stealing, and the latter is the most useful in bringing
home the theft, and perhaps in ridding a neighbourhood of an
undesirable. The invisible ink shows up as soon as eggs marked with it
are inserted in an appropriate solution.