If the Pheasant should ever, in this country, lose the protection of the Game Laws, it will probably dwindle away in like manner. Under existing circumstances, it offers an inducement to poaching too tempting to be resisted. Gamekeepers engage in more affrays with poachers of Pheasants than of all the other game birds taken collectively; and if the offence of destroying them were made less penal than it is at present, they would doubtless diminish rapidly. Next to Wood Pigeons, they are said to be the most destructive of all British birds; so that farmers would gladly do their utmost to exterminate them; their large size and steady onward flight combine to make them an 'easy shot' for the veriest tyro in gunnery, while the estimation in which they are held for the table would always secure for them a value in the market.
The places best adapted for Pheasants are thick woods in the neighbourhood of water, where there is abundance of shelter on the ground, in the shape of furze-bushes, brambles, tall weeds, rushes, or tussock grass; for they pass their lives almost exclusively on the ground, even roosting there, except in winter, when they fly up in the evening, and perch on the lower boughs of middling-sized trees. In April or May, the female bird scratches for herself a shallow hole in the ground under the shelter of some bushes or long grass, and lays from ten to fourteen eggs; but not unfrequently she allows might to prevail over right, and appropriates both the nest and eggs belonging to some evicted Partridge. The situation of the nests is generally known to the keepers, and all that are considered safe are left to be attended to by the owner. Such, however, as are exposed to the depredations of vermin or poachers are more frequently taken, and the eggs are placed under a domestic hen.
Pheasant chicks are able to run about and pick up their own food soon after they have escaped from the egg. This consists of grain, seeds, an enormous quantity of wireworms, small insects, especially ants and their eggs, and green herbage. When full grown, they add to this diet beans, peas, acorns, beech-mast, and the tuberous roots of several wild plants. A strip of buck-wheat, of which they are very fond, is sometimes sown for their special benefit along the skirt of a plantation. In seasons of scarcity they will enter the farmyard, and either quietly feed with the poultry, or, less frequently, do battle with the cocks for the sovereignty. A story is told, in the _Zoologist_, of a male Pheasant, which drove from their perch, and killed in succession, three fine cocks. The proprietor, with a view to prevent further loss, furnished a fourth cock with a pair of steel spurs. Armed with these, the lawful occupant was more than a match for the aggressor, who, next morning, was found lying dead on the ground beneath the perch. Another has been known to beat off a cat; and a third was in the habit of attacking a labouring man. The female is a timid, unoffending bird, as peaceful in her demeanour as quiet in her garb. The tints of her plumage, far less gaudy than in the male, are a protection to her in the nesting season, as being less likely to attract the notice either of poachers or vermin. Indeed, were she always to lie close, her nest would not be easily discovered, for the colour of her feathers so closely resembles that of withered leaves, that she is, when sitting, less conspicuous than her uncovered eggs would be.