FAMILY PARTIES 249 



year as any day that could be fixed. On either side of it 

 are two very diverse pictures. Except for the game-birds, 

 the young birds of every species are strong on the wing, are 

 ready to fly overseas, covering a hundred miles at a stretch. 

 But in England, unlike France where any bird is game, we 

 only think of the close season as affecting game-birds ; and 

 it is perhaps the most noted of days because it begins a 

 month where a new year opens in the business of town and 

 country, not less than because it begins the break-up of the 

 coveys. The change is very marked in the appearance of 

 all birds as soon as the pairs congregate and the families 

 grow up. But among autumn families that of the partridge 

 is of peculiar interest. There is no bird in Britain, the 

 grouse excepted, which fulfils with such devotion maternal 

 and indeed paternal duties. The very tone of solicitous 

 affection is suggested by the strange ventriloquial call of the 

 birds, heard everywhere towards sunset over English acres. 

 The scattered and broken coveys are hallooing good-nights or 

 summoning the lost members as they collect and prepare to 

 sleep or 'jug ' for the night. The call rings over the fields 

 in the ears of sportsmen returning in the dim light most 

 pitifully, most plaintively. Often the birds sleep together 

 in a quite compact mass. One of the reasons why they have 

 almost disappeared from many parts of Wales is that the 

 fields are small, and a poacher who watches the birds may 

 wipe out a covey at one shot. It is indeed a boast among 

 some of these native hunters that not a single bird of a covey 

 has escaped one of these foul shots. The instinct that helps 

 to their preservation against other enemies proves their ruin 

 among men. 



What may be called the ' covey system ' is very rare 

 among birds, rarer than one would expect. The grouse and 

 the partridge remain in coveys until pairing time, but only 



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