Shame-faced Cocks
At harvest-time the old cock pheasants begin to show themselves in the woods again. In April one grew almost weary of the insistent, boasting crows of the vainglorious dandies. Then for months they seemed quite to drop out of woodland society. They like to take things easily through the summer, leaving all family cares to the members of their harems. And no doubt they feel out of sorts, and have no desire to be seen—for they have to pass through the strain of the moulting season.
As the last acre of the cornfield is cut, a hundred young pheasants rise, with self-important splutterings, before the binders, each bird clearly betraying its sex by the growing feathers of maturity. But the cunning old cocks seldom advertise their presence. They slink stealthily out of the field while the machines are making their first rounds, and in a couple of yards from the corn reach the shelter of the hedge. They steal away with lowered heads, as though to hide their faces behind each blade of stubble. A dissipated, dishevelled old ruffian the cock pheasant appears while moulting—with half a tail, many flight feathers missing from the wings (corresponding feathers drop out together from each wing, so that he is not deprived of power of flight), and lacking all the metallic gloss of plumage, burnished gold and bronze. To come suddenly on a moulting cock pheasant—as when he is enjoying a quiet dust-bath—is to pity him. And the way he blunders off suggests that he is heartily ashamed of himself.
