Courtiers in Pens
March brings the gallant cock pheasant to his courting days. He knows that he is safe from men and guns, and stands recklessly within easy gunshot, a figure of defiance. Should he step away he lifts his feet with a pompous and disdainful air. He keeps a sharp eye on the hen pheasants of the wood: the time is near when he will be the sultan of half a score of hens; that is, if he remains at large in the woods. If confined in the keeper's pens, the number of wives is sternly regulated, and five, or at the most seven, are allowed to him. It is curious that in captivity the number of the cock pheasant's hens must be kept down, whereas the mallard, who pairs when wild, will cheerfully accept a polygamous state, and will faithfully husband two or three ducks if kept in a pen.
When partridges are penned up for a few months in the breeding season, on the French system of rearing, they remain faithful to their rule of pairing. Keepers have found that it is useless to try to regulate the partridge courtships: the birds must be left to their own instincts in choosing mates. It will not do to put any cock and hen together and expect them to pair. The hen is quite as particular in accepting a mate as the cock in selecting one for his attentions. Sometimes a hen wins the hearts of several suitors, and then there will be fighting, the strongest securing the prize, the defeated contentedly pairing off with the less sought-for hens. When a partridge betrothal has been ratified, the happy pair announce the fact to their friends by keeping sedulously together, apart from the other occupants of the general pen. The partridge is seldom quarrelsome: in a wild state a cock bird will go far afield in search of a mate if he cannot find one peaceably in his usual haunts—or he may make up his mind to go through the season unwedded. Sometimes, but rarely, it will happen that trouble arises through an amorous cock partridge losing his mate late in the nesting season and trying to run away with another's wife. But while some partridges show a pugnacious temperament, as they boast no spurs, like cock pheasants, their duels mostly take the form of chasing and running.
