RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE. 383 



both seasons. That these birds sometimes take very long 

 flights, is inferred from the circumstance that the Rev. T. 

 Fowler, of Colton, near the coast between Yarmouth and 

 Lowestoft, told Mr. Lubbock he knew two instances in 

 which four or five Red-Legged Partridges were found upon 

 the beach there, in so fatigued a state, that they were run 

 down by the boatmen, after endeavouring to conceal them- 

 selves in piles of seaweed, and under the fishing-boats 

 drawn up on the sand. The authors of the Catalogue of 

 Norfolk and Suffolk Birds, published in the fifteenth 

 volume of the Transactions of the Linnean Society, say, 

 " These birds are now very plentiful in some parts of 

 Suffolk. We have seen at least one hundred and fifty 

 brace upon Dummingworth-heath, and they are found in 

 greater or less numbers from Aldborough to Woodbridge." 

 They are now making their appearance in Lincolnshire ; 

 have been taken in Cambridgeshire ; and within the last 

 few years I have known three examples killed very near 

 Royston in Hertfordshire, one of which was shot out of a 

 covey. The Rev. Richard Lubbock, in his recently pub- 

 lished Fauna of Norfolk, mentions that in the beginning 

 of January 1845 he was called into a bird-preserver's shop 

 to look at a curious hybrid, believed to be bred between 

 a Red-legged Partridge and a Pheasant. It came from 

 Mr. Gurdon's of Letton, near Thetford. M. Temminck 

 also refers to a hybrid between the Red-legged Partridge 

 and the Common Partridge. 



These birds scrape together a slight nest of dried grass 

 and leaves upon the ground, among growing corn, grass, or 

 clover ; and two or three instances are recorded, in which 

 nests with eggs were found in the thatch, or upon the top 

 of low stacks. The eggs are from fifteen to eighteen in 

 number, of a reddish yellow white, spotted and speckled 



