FAMILY PARTIES 251 



But these formidable economic reasons are joined, we may 

 allow, with a vital joy in companionship. Birds play as 

 well as eat, laugh as well as fear. Perhaps their start in 

 life tends to comradeship. In the way of snugness and 

 close packing there is no nursery to compare with the in- 

 terior of that deep beautiful bowl of lichen, moss, and down 

 in which the tit houses its young, who are often a dozen 

 or more in number. You would say the thing were impos- 

 sible till you handle one of these tits. They make a very 

 fair show of size to the eye, but are in substance imponder- 

 able. They are no more than bits of down themselves ; 

 and when they first leave the nest, a puff of wind sends them 

 astray like a single feather. 



Except in their family affection, no bird could be less like 

 the partridge, which is very heavy for its size, like most birds 

 which either run well or swim well. One cannot imagine the 

 long-tailed tit on the ground. One can imagine the partridge 

 never leaving it. Indeed the French or red-legged partridge 

 very often fails altogether to leave the ground. In districts 

 of heavy clay-land in the midlands, scores of partridges are 

 caught on the ground from inability to raise themselves with 

 the adherent clay that their running exercise had accumulated. 

 On a horse one can hunt them down if the fields are at all big 

 and the hedgerows not over thick, according to a recognised 

 form of sport practised in certain parts of India. 



The parental instinct of partridges has been very closely 

 watched owing to the attention of keepers who have to spend 

 much labour in preserving the nests from foxes. It is 

 evidence of the quick observation — for ' love has eyes ' — 

 arising from this instinct that for many years it was found 

 impossible to design a nest egg which should deceive the 

 partridge. The birds will sit so close that they will face 

 death in very many forms. In foul weather you may find 



