120 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



with their natural chill of morning and evening and 

 the dwindling store of insects of the season make 

 the birds willing to move before every breath of a 

 north wind. 



PARTRIDGE PROSPECTS. 



Jtdy 31. Norfolk is our best county for partridges, 

 and in all Norfolk few districts can compare with the 

 few miles of coastland which lies east of Holkham. 

 Here Lord Leicester has from time to time provided 

 for Royalty partridge drives which have been famous 

 for the numbers slain. But there is little chance of 

 " record bags," when in midsummer you see many 

 pairs feeding together without young, and most of 

 the coveys are small. For this the intermittent bad 

 weather, which commenced in 1902 with a chilly 

 deluge when most of the eggs were on the point of 

 hatching, is responsible. Often, however, a shooting 

 season turns out much better than any one, before 

 harvest, thought possible. The gamekeeper sees the 

 evidence of wreckage among the broods reared in 

 exposed places ; but even the gamekeeper has but a 

 vague notion of the number of partridge chicks that 

 hide all day under the cover of standing crops. From 

 many nests that he had marked in the cornfield hedge- 

 rows he could count by the broken eggshells how 

 many children the stealthy mother had led into the 

 springing crop that covered the wide fields like a 

 green velvet pile ; but now, when the barley is flaxen 

 and the wheat glows golden brown to harvest, he 

 may as easily guess fifty under as over the number 

 of " birds " that any forty-acre field contains. 



