Black Partridges 1 3 



of young wheat. Omar, however, puts it more 

 picturesquely : 



" But come with old Khayam and leave the Lot 

 Of Kai Kobad and Kai Khosrau forgot, 



With me along some strip of Herbage strown 

 That just divides the desert from the sown." 



With the tamarisk trees and the long waving 

 yellow grass, this part of the delta presents an 

 extraordinary contrast both to the monotonous 

 Jcharki - coloured plains of the populated parts 

 and to the surrounding sandy desert. The birds 

 rise in singles, twos, and threes from grass and 

 tamarisk. When the ground is suitable, small 

 drives are tried, and these afford a better test 

 of the straightness of our powder. The beaters 

 are full of zeal. " Purr " * they shout as each 

 bird gets up. The difficulty is to keep them in 

 any sort of line. 



As the cultivation is left behind, the cover 

 gets thicker, and the open spaces fewer and 

 smaller. Birds here are very plentiful, and 

 annoy us by getting up in scores out of shot 

 to fly into dense bush, whence there is no 

 possibility of moving them. So we have to 

 turn about. Winged birds are nearly always 



1 Purr is the Seistani for partridge, an onomatopoetic word 

 imitating the sound that we express by the word " whirr." 



