Part 10

A wet, cold spring means death to the majority of early leverets. They are given a good chance of life, coming into the world as perfect little hares, with complete fur coat and open eyes; and, like partridge chicks, they can run on the day they are born. But they are not always strong enough to withstand the English spring. A leveret, no larger than a man's fist, runs with extraordinary speed, and often escapes from a dog, while a man must be sound in wind and limb to overtake it in the open. Rabbits, born naked, develop a very fair turn of speed so soon as they come above ground, but they quickly give up in despair if pursued.

There is a widespread idea that hares breed only once in a year, and produce only one leveret. The gamekeeper knows well that puss may produce several leverets at a birth, and will have family after family from as early as January to the end of September. As with rabbits, the leverets born early one year themselves may breed in the late summer of the same year. No doubt the hare is credited with only one or two young ones because only one or two are found together. Occasionally, it is true, several very young leverets may be found in one place; but they are usually cradled in separate seats, not far from each other. We once found a family of eight little leverets crouching in a bunch under a heap of hedge-trimmings. Evidently we discovered them within a few moments of their entry into the world.

The mother hare is wise to separate her family. Many dangers threaten the leveret's life; but if families were kept together the young ones would be even more open to attack from rooks and crows, and scent-hunting vermin in fur. The leveret with its eyes pecked out by a rook, yet still living, is a sight which pleads for the mercy of a swift death at the gamekeeper's hands. The mother hare is keenly alive to the dangers besetting her family. If you find a leveret one day nestling in a tuft of grass, or against a clod of earth, whether or not you handle it the mother will certainly remove it before the morrow. She will wind danger in your scent.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Hens in Cocks' Feathers

A mule pheasant is a sterile hen who has assumed more or less the plumage of a cock. We cannot say we have ever heard one of these transformed hens give vent to a crow. But once we owned a game-bantam hen, who, without changing into cock's plumage, crowed in a way that would have done credit to any fine rooster. The keeper does not appreciate a barren hen pheasant, whether or not she wears cock's feathers. She is an unproductive loafer, and is likely to be destructive to the chicks of other hens, both to wild ones and those reared artificially. Disappointed in motherhood herself, she is jealous that others should be mothers.

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About Nesting Pheasants

Pheasants' eggs vary strangely in shade: they show a much wider range of shading than partridges', from almost white through the most delicate gradations of blue-green and olive-brown to the rich, warm hue of the nightingale's egg. The keeper prefers the eggs with the deeper tones, persuading himself that they will produce the strongest chicks. He has small faith in the fertility of eggs that are very light in hue, and he holds to an idea that if a light, sky-blue egg hatches at all it will produce a pied chick. When a hen lays in another's nest, it is rather by some subtle distinction of shape than by colour that the keeper discovers the trespasser's eggs: for the eggs of one bird may vary much in shade. The nest is a simple affair, merely a shallow hollow, scratched out, ringed by dry grass or leaves or any dead material of the sort within easy reach; if dry grass is plentiful a generous supply fringes the hollow, but a pheasant is not one to trouble to fetch and carry for her nest. Cunning as she may be in the choice of a site, no instinct or reason prompts her to go a yard away to collect material, however plentiful at that short distance, for comfort and warmth. Her fabric, plentiful or scanty, is arranged in a typical fashion. Standing in the middle of her scraped-out hollow, she throws the bits of grass or the leaves over her back, so that the margin of the nest corresponds to the size of her body. Sometimes a fowl is seen going through this performance; the goose also employs this primitive instinctive manner of gauging her nest's dimensions.

All game-birds lay their eggs on the ground. Though pheasants are peculiarly fond of perching in trees, by day as well as by night, they rarely make a nest off the ground; though now and again one may see a nest placed a few feet high in a tree, resting on a mattress of ivy or on the ruins of other nests--the derelict homes of pigeons, perhaps occupied later by squirrels. Pheasants will also sometimes make use of those convenient hollows to be found on the top of underwood stumps; and doubtless would do so more often if it were not for the unyielding nature of wood, which they cannot scratch into shape as instinct prompts. In rides where the old underwood stumps have not been grubbed, pheasants love to nest on the stumps' tops. In spite of annual trimming, the stumps for years continue to throw up a mass of leafy shoots. The pheasant creeps between them, and is perfectly hidden--at least, as to her head and body. We recall a nest in such a spot within a foot of a path where many people passed daily. Not one discovered the pheasant's secret, except a keeper who saw her protruding tail. The pheasant had forgotten about her tail. Naturally the keeper was annoyed at her stupidity in thinking that because her body was hidden her tail could not be seen. Fearing lest others should discover the nest on this account, he went for a pair of his wife's scissors, and made sure that the tail would tell no more stories.

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The Broody Hen

The wisest poultry-farmer does not understand broody hens better than the gamekeeper. The ways of the broody hen are at once deep, and stupid, and annoying. No power on earth will force a broody hen to sit when she is in a revolting spirit. To take a hen from the nest of her choice and expect her to sit properly on a fresh nest, where even pheasants' eggs costing a shilling apiece await her, usually means disappointment. Yet it is as risky to put the pheasants' eggs in the broody hen's chosen nest. Other hens will disturb her, rats are likely to steal the eggs, dogs may worry her, and she cannot be relied upon to return to her own nest after going off to feed. And if she may leave the nest at her own free will she is liable to sit too long without a break. Her eggs in that case do not have enough fresh air, and the heat of the hen diminishes through want of food, so that weak chicks develop, and may fail even to break their shells. So the keeper is obliged to provide a suitable nest, and to try to induce the broody hen to take to it kindly. He finds that an empty cheese-box with a lid will make a capital nesting-box for occasional use. If rats are feared, he encases the box in an armour of wire-netting. Then within he fashions a shallow nest, using firm mould, and adding a little bruised straw; if the hollow is too deep the eggs may be piled on each other, and the hen cannot plant her feet comfortably or sit evenly over the eggs. The hollow is lined with a ring or collar of twisted straw, to retain the warmth of the hen, and prevent her eggs falling out when she moves her feet to turn round. Then the keeper goes off for the broody hen, which he carries in a sack of open texture. Whether or not a hen is really broody may be determined most easily at night. A hen chosen by day, though she imitates the broody plaint, may be intent only on laying eggs--not on sitting. But the hens who are in earnest will be found in the nests after dark; and they are known by their dull combs. Into the sitting-box the keeper shuts the hen of his choice, leaving her with a nest-egg or two by way of encouragement. He is in no hurry to give her live eggs. He waits until she is well settled after the move, and has had time to round up the nest to her liking. At first she may be inclined to stand, or at least not to go down properly; but after a little while she will be found spread out in the proper fashion of the hen who intends to hatch eggs at all costs, and she will complain loudly, and peck fiercely if touched. And then she is entrusted with the precious eggs.

Once a day the keeper gently lifts each broody hen off the nest to feed, tethering her by a string tied to her leg or shutting her into a coop. On the first day she is taken from the eggs only for ten minutes; but her time off is gradually increased, as the eggs require more oxygen, to half an hour during the second week of sitting, and then to three-quarters of an hour or longer towards the end of the third week, if the weather proves genial. Plenty of air is good for the chicks in the eggs, especially during the last days of the hatching. A hen was accidentally kept from her eggs for a whole afternoon on the day before they were due to hatch; yet all the thirteen eggs hatched out, and stronger chicks were never seen.

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The Frenchmen's Nests

The red-legged partridge begins to nest quite a week earlier than the English birds. The keeper expects to find his first partridge's egg about April 25: and probably it will be a Frenchman's. Great will be his satisfaction if the first egg should happen to be an English bird's. The same friendly rivalry exists between neighbouring keepers as to who shall find the first partridge egg as with the first pheasant's egg. Not until May will the partridges' laying season be in full swing. English partridges nest always on the ground, but Frenchmen sometimes nest so far aloft as on the top of a straw-rick. So they escape the fox, which tears the English birds off their nests on all sides. There is an idea in the heads of country folk that the French partridge habitually deserts her first clutch of eggs without cause. No doubt this delusion has arisen from the forsaken appearance of the birds' nests and eggs; when stained by soil, the eggs look decidedly stale. While the mother bird never deserts her nest without good cause, she is in no hurry about nesting; and there are often long intervals between the laying of the first egg, the completion of the clutch, and the beginning of sitting operations. We have heard of a case where this interval was one of six weeks. Yet a full brood was hatched.

French partridges have a good deal in common with guinea-fowls. The call which members of a covey of Frenchmen make to each other bears the strongest resemblance to the guinea-fowl's "Go-back, go-back." They are alike in making a deep "scrape" in the soil for their nest, which is complete when the hollow has been scratched to their liking. Then the dingy-white ground-colour and the rusty speckles of their eggs are similar; and the eggs of guinea-fowl and of Frenchmen are commonly found well plastered and stained with soil, through being turned over in the unlined nest. The eggs have notably thick shells.

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