i6o Northern Observations of Inland Birds 



animals and by predatory birds ; often the nests are 

 swamped, while again a good many eggs are addled 

 owing to the tunnelling of mice and moles under the 

 nest. The eggs then fall through, becoming partially or 

 entirely buried, and, of course, such eggs never come to 

 anything. 



The chicks, when finally they arrive, are subject to 

 many ailments, besides having numerous bird and animal 

 foes. The parents will fight gallantly for them should 

 they be attacked by stoat or weasel, and a farm labourer 

 with whom I am acquainted witnessed such a combat, 

 which he described as lasting some minutes. Interfering 

 eventually the weasel bounded off, and he found the 

 ground covered with feathers and two or three dead chicks 

 lying among the melee. So absorbed were the two birds 

 in the deadly combat that he '' almost caught them in 

 his hands." 



I remember one terrific hailstorm in Norfolk which 

 killed not only hundreds of chicks but scores of parent 

 birds crouching in the open with their chicks sheltered 

 beneath them. 



In localities where the ground is of clay formation 

 the partridge chicks have yet another foe, and a very 

 deadly one during a rainy season. The clay, forming 

 into pellets, sticks to their toes and feathers, and 

 accumulates till they are weighed down by it and unable 

 to follow their parents. A good many partridges, old and 

 young, are killed by flying into telegraph wires, and a 

 railway man told me that he obtained many a Sunday's 

 dinner by picking up birds that had thus fallen — together 

 with an occasional hare, or part of a hare, that had tried 

 to race a train. For this reason it has often been set 

 forth that the partridge is either deficient in intellect or 

 possessed of poor eyesight, neither of w^hich theories 

 strike one as very convincing. The partridge is certainly 



