118 Major Maurice Portal— Chukor Partridges from Crete



sturdy youngster, with black cap perfect, red face, black beak and

eyes, and black or dark legs and feet. The wings are green, with some

yellow showing in them when he flaps. The back and breast feathers

are now growing, and are dark. He can climb and fly from perch to

perch, and is nearly as large as his mother. The parents are very

devoted to him, and it is comical to see him sitting between them.

I am afraid this is the only one, although my cook seems sure she saw

two. I know there were eggs since I saw them, as stated above.

Perhaps we shall find out for certain now one, at any rate, is out.



CHUKOR PARTRIDGES FROM CRETE

By Major Maurice Portal, D.S.O.


In the early summer of 1920 Col. R. Meinertzhagen kindly brought

me from Crete a pair of Caccabis saxatilis ; they were tame and only

had a few feathers cut from one wing. They were pinioned permanently

in July, as they began to fly on to the top of the garden wall. They were

very tame with the gardener, and used to remain quite near him when

at work. The cock being always rather more shy than the hen, but in

bad weather both used to come into the potting shed and sit on the

flower-pots while work was going on, and roosted there at night.

Beyond water and a handful of wheat they required no attention.


About the beginning of March they showed signs of pairing, and

spent most of the day walking about together inspecting possible

nesting sites, and finally selected the root of an old fig-tree. The hen

scraped a round hole and the cock brought her a straw in his beak,

running round and round and finally throwing it over his back, when

she picked it up and put it in the nest, Avhich finally was roughly lined

with straw and dead leaves. A spell of warm weather brought on an

old rhubarb plant, some 30 yards off, and on the 25th of March they

spent all the day near it, and next day scraped out another

nest under a leaf, making free use of the straw already there, and only

adding dead leaves.


On 15th April there were ten eggs in this nest, dirty white in colour,

with faint spots of brown, and as we had 10 degrees of frost I took



