Starving Birds
The old name for March, "Starvation Month," is usually justified, if winter, with snow, carries on into March. Countless birds die of starvation. After a hard winter there is little food to be found; but large berries remain a long time on some of the ivy bushes, and come into favour among robins and blackbirds. There has been little green growth since September, though the larger celandine shows bigger leaves, coltsfoot is out, wild arum leaves are green in the hedges, and there is green growth on elder-bushes, woodbine, privet, and brier bushes. Insect life for food is of negligible quantity: though myriads of gnats may be hatched by the sun, they are poor eating. Of flowers there are hardly any, and the sparrow, pecking at the crocuses in his need, earns the hatred of gardeners. It is a time of hunger with many animals awakening out of sleep; with the field-voles uncurling from their beds of grass, and with the hedgehogs shaking themselves free of their balls of leaves. A new activity is stirring, birds are living at pressure, many animals have young, hundreds of birds come in daily from overseas—but supplies for all seem at the lowest ebb.
The Egg of Eggs
In the keeper's year there is no moment so delightful as when he finds his first wild pheasant's egg. The earliest egg of the season is looked on almost like a nugget of gold. You may observe a keeper turning out of his way to pass along the sunny side of a hedgerow favoured by pheasants, craning his neck to look at the far side of a tuft of withered grass, and with his stick turning over the dead leaves of a likely hollow. Day after day, in early April, he perseveres in his quest; and though he may find scores of depressions scooped out by the hens—"scrapes" he calls them—it may be a long while before his search is rewarded by the sight he yearns for. He is appeased—though he has but found something found thousands of times before, only a pheasant's egg. But it is the first of a new season, and precious beyond all others. There may have been eggs already in his pens. The penned birds are protected from wind and cold rains. They live on a well-drained plot facing the south, and they are treated so liberally to rich foods, spices, and tonic drinks that they can hardly help laying early. The first egg is a satisfaction, but nothing like the first wild-laid egg. At the earliest chance, the finder meets a brother keeper, and his story of the finding loses nothing in the telling, while it gains a good deal from the envy on the brother keeper's face.
Pheasants' Eggs
By the middle of April, the gamekeeper finds that a few of his pheasants are sitting. They are the older hens. Those that begin to lay early in April do not often lay more than ten or twelve eggs before beginning to sit. But it is not unusual for a young hen to lay fifteen, seventeen, or even more eggs. That the older hens should lay fewer eggs suggests that they have no more than they can furnish with the heat necessary for hatching. Later on, in warmer weather, a pheasant can manage half as many eggs again as in early spring. The old hens have eggs well on the way towards hatching before hens still in their first year have begun to lay. Pheasants commonly lay eggs in each other's nests. We have known a pheasant even to lay eggs in a thrush's nest, built on the ground beneath a furze-bush. Like the nest, three of the four thrush's eggs were destroyed by the intruder. The keeper well knows how to take advantage of this slovenly habit of his pheasants. About ten days before the time when he expects them to begin to lay in earnest, he makes up a number of false nests, into which he puts either imitation nest-eggs, or addled eggs saved from the last season. Having some respect for the sweetness of his pocket, he takes the precaution of boiling the addled eggs for several hours in lime-water. He makes up the false nests in places where the eggs shall be comparatively safe; his great object being to induce his birds to lay at home, and not to stray away into his neighbour's coverts. The method saves much time in searching for nests. But even when he has the best of luck, a keeper would not be a proper keeper if he did not complain that his hens are laying on his neighbour's ground. Not unusually, three or four hens lay in the same nest—we have known six to lay in one nest, and on one day. From three nests within fifty yards of each other we have counted more than one hundred eggs—and this in a place where pheasants were few. It is a great satisfaction to the keeper to find one of these co-operative nests. He knows that if he leaves the hens to themselves, their eggs will soon be piled up in the nest on top of each other, like a heap of stones. No one pheasant could hatch out such a prodigious clutch, even if left in undisputed possession. What usually happens is that some hens want to lay and others to sit, so that between them the eggs are spoiled. The keeper anticipates trouble by collecting the eggs and distributing them elsewhere for hatching. He knows that his fowls will not hatch out as high a proportion of pheasant eggs from large nests as from smaller ones, since few are given the regular turning necessary to preserve their fertility. But, in spite of this knowledge, there is a deal of friendly rivalry among keepers as to who shall find the nest with the most eggs.