In August, 1962, farmers in Newport County complained to the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Game that pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) were damaging potato crops. Aerial stems of potatoes are occasionally eaten by pheasants (Edminster 1954); however, food habits studies of pheasants in South Dakota, where potatoes are raised (Trautman 1952), and reports of crop depredation by pheasants (Dambach and Leedy 1949) have not included evidence of feeding on potato tubers. Pheasant damage to potatoes had never been reported in Rhode Island and, at first, the identity of the animals involved was questioned. Field investigations, however, revealed that pheasants were feeding on the underground tubers, not the green aerial parts of the plants. The tubers had been scratched out of the hills and pecked (Fig. 1). The amount of feeding on each tuber varied from a few pecks to consumption of the entire tuber, leaving only the skin. Unfortunately, even one peck mark makes a tuber unmarketable. Most of the tubers eaten were from