RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE, 411 



of their wounds after a prolonged fliglit ; whilst many 

 a bird, when finally brought to bag, shows evidences 

 of former injuries from the long shots, so frequently, 

 though somewhat cruelly, made at them at almost 

 impossible distances. There is one other particular in 

 which the French partridge differs entirely from our 

 common species — namely, in its habit of occasionally 

 perching in trees, flying up into the thick foliage like a 

 pheasant or wood-pigeon ;^ an action which at first not 

 a little astonished our local sportsmen, many of whom 

 most probably entertained the same opinion as an old 

 veteran partridge-shot, who assured me that the first 

 time he met with a covey of red-legs, and some of them 

 took to the trees, " he fully believed the birds had gone 

 mad." On one occasion, whilst shooting on a farm 

 where they were very numerous, I observed this course 

 adopted by single birds in three instances on the same 

 day, and more recently I have known a good-sized covey 

 flushed from the top of an oak timber, and single 

 birds, when chased from placQ to place in snowy 

 weather, fly up to and settle in the tops of oak pollards. 

 They may also be seen sitting occasionally in a long 

 row on the top of a wall, the ridge of a barn roof, 

 or on an ordinary park fencing. It is not an unusual 

 custom in this county, when nests of the grey par- 

 tridge have been mown out, or discovered in too exposed 

 situations, to transfer the eggs thus taken to a 

 French partridge's nest, and in several instances I have 

 known them successfully hatched, and the young birds 

 treated in every respect as her own by the foster 



* M. Temminck was evidently unaware of this peculiarity, 

 when, in his "Manuel D' Ornithologie," he included the red- 

 legged partridge in his second section of " Perdrix proprement 

 dites," giving the following as the chief characteristics of that 

 group : — " lis vivent dans les champs et ne se perchent point sur 

 les arbres." 

 3g2 



