PAETRIDGE NESTING HABITS 145 



had vanished from the grass. The ash trees 

 and the oaks unfolded their pale green and 

 olive leaves ; their lowest branches drooped 

 over the matted thickets of the ditch. Clusters 

 of celandine peeped from every bank, with 

 violets and hyacinths, anemones and prim- 

 roses. The pale-golden broom, the ruddy- 

 golden gorse, their splendour two-fold in the 

 golden sunlight, seemed to make a garden's 

 paradise of the roughly cultivated fields about 

 the dwelling of the hamlet carpenter. Beside 

 an oak in the lower hedge of the cornfield and 

 behind a screen of broom and furze, yet away 

 from the beaten track of rabbit and vole, the 

 partridges had built their nest. Hardly perhaps 

 could the few bent and withered leaves collected 

 in a slight depression of the soil be called a nest. 

 Yet nothing more was needed. Sheltered from 

 wind and rain in such a position that even the 

 drops of a summer shower would not fall into 

 the hollow from the tree overhead, and hidden 

 from the keen sight of sparrow-hawk and kestrel, 

 the nest suited its purpose admirably. 



By the end of May a dozen glossy brown eggs 

 were deposited therein, and over these the hen 

 bird brooded tenderly, sitting closely hour after 

 hour, and leaving her charge only at infrequent 

 intervals for food and recreation. The fussy 

 long-tailed titmouse, that had her lichen-covered 



