March 



a moment is the bird still ; it seems to be working 

 against time ; and when it rises, even though un- 

 alarmed, it makes off abruptly and at top speed, only 

 to drop on the farther side of some hedgerow and 

 resume its erratic performance. 



During the month there has been a good deal of 

 " sound and fury " in the partridge haunts, where 

 early morning assemblies have been held to settle 

 matrimonial matters for the ensuing season. Cocks 

 have strutted and fought, the brave and the fair 

 retiring from communal life into domestic privacy. 

 A snap of uncongenial weather may yet throw them 

 back into the looser relationship of the covey ; but, 

 as the month closes, paired birds dot the fields, lying 

 low and moving slowly, with very little action of the 

 head as they feed, so that an inexperienced eye would 

 pass over them without being arrested. By popping 

 up suddenly from behind a hedge, I came upon a 

 pair feeding in the fallows at a distance of no more 

 than half a dozen yards from me. Instead of taking 

 flight, they crouched down motionlessly among the 

 clods, their low, rounded backs and little peeping 

 heads reminding me of tortoises. Immediately I 

 descended behind the hedge, they were off with a 

 whirr that was an amusing commentary on their 

 former inaction. As night falls, the birds begin to 

 cry in the grass fields a cry in its quality not unlike 

 that of the lapwing, but inverted, the partridge 

 opening on the higher, and closing on the lower note, 

 whilst the lapwing does the reverse. Ere calling, 



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