CHAPTER IX.

Walk the Sixth continued-Pheasant Breeding-The Badger -The White-tailed Eagle-Capture of another Badger.

THE first few minutes after their arrival at the keeper's house were taken up in stowing away the magnificent additions he enabled them to make to their egg-treasures. They took three of the pheasant's eggs, which, with those of the grouse, they blew first, an operation which even the sturdy Bob was excessively glad to get completed. These large-sized eggs took up so much room that their egg-box was inadequate to contain all they had to carry home. The keeper helped them out of their difficulty by bringing for their use an empty wadding-box, and two or three cap-boxes, the contents of which had been exploded in his service long since. Bob thought these latter, with the help of a little cotton wool, would be the very thing; and on trial, found that the nuthatch's eggs would travel together with the woodcock's in the snuggest way possible in one of them, while another

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would contain the stockdove's eggs. As they were packing these last, Jack inquired if wild pigeons of that species always made their nest in deserted rabbit burrows? Banks replied

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Certainly not. I have known them build in the thick bushy heads of pollard trees, and sometimes even on the ground under a thick furze bush; and once I saw one in a hollow tree. I think they are on the increase, too. There are certainly more here than there used to be. I believe it is the same in Norfolk; and an old friend of mine, who is now gamekeeper on a nobleman's moors in Yorkshire, told me when I saw him a little while ago, that about eight years ago he shot one, and had to ask the parson-who knew a good deal about birds-what it was; while, last winter, he said he saw them ten or a dozen together. One evening in December he was going home after a day's shooting, and happening to go near a fir plantation, he saw a number of wild pigeons taking up their lodgings for the night in it. He went in to obtain a shot, and the first he fired brought down two stockdoves. And he afterwards had occasion to notice that a party of these birds usually arrived first in the plantation, about roosting time; the ringdoves not arriving till twenty minutes or half an hour later. He found, too, that though these two birds roosted together, and

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STOCKDOVES.

so indiscriminately that he more than once killed one of each sort at the same shot, yet they certainly had not been feeding together during the day; the crops of the ringdoves were full, even to bursting -one or two did burst with the force of the fallof holly berries, while those of the stockdove were fairly supplied with the seeds of the wild mustard, two varieties of which grew with sad abundance in the fields of a slovenly-managed farm about two miles off. He noticed this in noticing that both birds were apt to disgorge part of the contents of their crops when not shot quite dead. He con nected that I don't know whether rightly or not -with their accustomed habit of feeding their young; i.e., by disgorging food, already partly digested, from their own crops to the throats of the young birds. I should think, though, there may be a connexion between the two habits."

Jack's next question was, how he came to have so many pheasants' eggs.

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"My answer to that question," said the gamekeeper, "will be best given out of doors. have always reared a good many pheasants here under hens, but for that purpose we usually brought in eggs which had been laid in the woods, or hedge-rows, or copses about; as many of these outlying nests are in very insecure places, and there was very small likelihood the broods would

be brought safely off, or, if brought off, reared. Thus we always had some few pheasants' eggs that were addle. But the last year or two I have been trying a new plan."

As he finished speaking, he got through a sort of stile inserted in a narrow opening in a very high and thick hedge. The boys on following him saw divers coops, with hens in them, scattered about in various parts of an enclosure, sheltered on three sides by like fences to the one they had come through, and on the fourth by an overhanging plantation, which clothed a sloping bank. Close on the verge of this plantation was an extensive but very light structure, closely paled in all round to about four or five feet high, but with spars rising every three or four feet, from and above the palings, to a total height of eight or nine feet; and where the palings ceased, there large nets with meshes two inches square commenced, covering the whole in on the sides and over the top very securely. This structure was probably fifty or sixty yards long at least, and, as the boys saw directly, divided into compartments, each of which seemed to be twenty-five or thirty feet square. But before proceeding nearer to these enclosures, the gamekeeper drew their attention to the hens and coops. To their great pleasure they saw numbers of young pheasants in or

about several of these coops, some apparently only a few days old, others already as big as partridges, and beginning to show increasing length in the tail feathers; other hens again were sitting. The natural habits of the young bird were attended to, partly by the thick growth of brushwood and of coarse herbage in and near the foot of the tall hedges, partly by strewing quantities of brushwood in various places not far from the coops; and the young pheasants of larger growth showed their sense of the attention by betaking themselves to the shelter and concealment so afforded, immediately the keeper and the two lads showed themselves near them. Directing their steps now to the large net-inclosed structure, the gamekeeper, on reaching it, took a key from his pocket and gave admission to himself and his companions to the interior. Everything was quite still as they entered; but having closed the door, he gently stirred a heap of loose brushwood which lay in the centre with a stick he had in his hand. First one hen pheasant obeyed the intimation thus given, then a second, then a cock, and then a third hen. As long as the visitors remained quiet, the birds, too, either squatted in a corner or ran along the sides of the enclosure from one corner to another; but, if anybody stirred a step or two, they took wing, sometimes one or two, sometimes all four