RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE. 413 



found far from the outer fence, through which they can 

 run on the slightest alarm; and in walking quietly 

 up a wood side, where these birds are plentiful, it is 

 very usual to see one or more red- legs issuing from 

 the hedge bottom, and hurrying along under the bank. 

 They are fond also of basking in thick rushy carrs ; 

 and in low meadows will hide in the sedgy margins 

 of the watercourses, where I have shot them late in the 

 season when looking for snipe. 



Both Mr. Lubbock and Messrs. Gurney and Fisher 

 have alluded to the supposed migratory habits of the 

 red-legged partridge, and my own enquiries amongst 

 naturalists and others residing in the vicinity of the 

 sea certainly confirm their statements as to small 

 coveys of these birds, generally in an exhausted condi- 

 tion, being regularly met with in the spring of the 

 year on various parts of the coast. My friend Captain 

 Longe, of Yarmouth, who has for several years paid 

 particular attention to the ornithology of that neigh- 

 bourhood, informs me, that in many successive springs, 

 about March or April, he has found French partridges 

 early in the morning, running about on the beach close 

 to the water; and, on one occasion, when the sands 

 were perfectly covered with their footmarks, he flushed 

 a covey of from twenty to thirty, which flew round 

 once or twice and then out to sea, still keeping on in a 

 direct course until he lost sight of them, although using 

 a good glass. Every year, about the same time, many 

 of these birds are captured under the boats or fish- 

 baskets lying on the beach, and others are run down 

 by lads in the gardens near the Denes, and sometimes 

 even within the town itself. In the spring of 1865, 

 I was told by Mr. Horace Marshall, also a resident 

 at Yarmouth, who has on more than one occasion 

 drawn my attention to this subject, that about the 

 first week in April (the usual time, he says, for their 



