Pheasant Brood
At the cottage the pheasant hen is about with two chicks now. Looking out of the cottage window, I could see the three birds moving along the side of the garden among the tall grass that should have been cut down a month ago and under the hazel hedge that stretches farther into the garden every year. I began to wonder how they got there, for I am pretty sure that the hen hatched her late clutch in the wood down below and brought the two surviving youngsters up to our sanctuary of neglect as soon as they could follow her. To do this she must have explored well, for the garden is bounded on two sides by a high wall, on. a third by wire-netting, and on the fourth by another wall at least four feet high, along the top of which the hazel hedge grows from a bank. There may be some hidden cornet where the chicks scrambled and fluttered in, but I am quite certain that they were hero before they could fly and that the nest was not in the garden. They arc safe where they are. When they fly off, it will probably be to one of the adjoining woods where they will surely fall victims in one of the drives before Christmas, which seems a pity after all the dangers they must survive to fly on a morning in November or December.
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