The Pheasants' Roosting-Trees
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.
