To find out how the wild birds have fared is always difficult: one never sees them properly until the days of shooting are at hand—and not always then, when a sight of them rather under than over forty yards distant might be welcome. We may pass by a wood outside which many pheasants may be feeding, as a flock of fowls, or sitting lazily about on the fences, some perhaps indolently stretching a wing in the pleasant wallow of a dust-bath; but this does not prove that pheasants have done well—merely that there are so many pheasants at a certain place; it does not even prove that they will be there the next day. Such a spot may be a place where large numbers of pheasants are reared. One may count a hundred birds in the corner of a field—perhaps there should have been a hundred and fifty. Or perhaps the hundred to be seen means better luck than usual in the breeding season in that particular part. A man who sees pheasants where he does not know how many were bred may think a dozen a large number, or he may view with scorn the sight of several hundreds if he has been accustomed to see thousands. We know places where so many pheasants may be seen at any time as to suggest that they swarm there regardless of the season. But the birds seen casually may have been bought from a game-farm and turned down, to make up a supply that failed. However, it always delights the sportsman's eye to see many pheasants about a wood—especially if he has the shooting.
From a just standpoint, it is the comparison of what might have been with what is that settles the verdict on the pheasant season. The season cannot be judged by the birds of one preserve. Allowance must be made for many points. The number of wild broods to wild hens left to manage their own affairs, and the number of eggs set under fowls and how they hatched must be considered. Then the quality of the rearing-ground makes one district much better than another—whether heavy or light, low-lying or high, and rich or poor in natural food. The question of foxes must be weighed, and one would like to know before judging a season from any one case how many birds were turned into covert at five to seven weeks old, and how many fell victims to foxes—to say nothing of gapes.
Weather to pray for
The keeper may control the supply of hand-reared birds: he may make up for the spoiling of an egg, or the loss of a chick, which would otherwise mean a pheasant the less; but he has no control over the season as it affects wild birds. What he prays for is a showery April, with a sun to shine between the storms. And he wants fair weather after the middle of May, the longer the better. A bright warm summer is good for all pheasants, whether it be their fate to start life beneath a fowl in a stuffy, if cosy, coop, or to be gathered beneath the breast and wings of their real mother in the wood, or among the corn. A fine summer means more to birds than to man, for to them it is a matter of life or death.
After the Opening
Walking home through the woods on the evening of an October First, we came to a standstill before a low tree-branch on which an old cock pheasant was going to roost. We were within a yard of him; yet he sat stock-still, and stared at us fearlessly with unblinking eyes. The minutes passed, and after we had stood there for some little time, staring back at the old pheasant, it really seemed that we had established a bond of communication. And this is what we understood the old cock to be saying:
"Here I am, you see, and not afraid of you; and none the worse for an opening day that has been, I must admit, a trifle lively. And I may inform you that before I went to roost I made careful inquiries among my very numerous progeny, and not one is a feather the worse for all the banging that has been going on. All are in good condition, in fine plumage, and strong on the wing as usual, and, I may add, on the leg. By the way, I myself, in the course of the day, from a secure retreat, watched more than one sportsman critically examining the bodies of several unfortunate birds—needless to say, there was no son or daughter of mine among them. Good night."