46 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
in May, when partridges begin to lay in earnest, 
there are few fields possessing the amount of cover 
which the birds consider decent for nesting purposes, 
except grass fields. Unfortunately, the majority of 
these are mown for hay about ten days before the 
majority of the eggs are ready to hatch. Hence 
the disastrous results practically unavoidable now 
that the whirring horse-drawn ‘cutters’ do all the 
mowing. 
I have known a partridge to lay on a bare fallow. 
Special precautions were taken to see whether she 
would succeed in hatching her eggs, and she did so. 
True, there were not any foxes dangerously near, and 
since the rooks did not demolish the eggs, I imagine 
they must have looked upon the nest as a hoax. 
Here are my ideas on partridge coverts where 
money is an object. The crops which I rejoice to 
see here and there are rye (for seed) and forward- 
sown vetches; if the latter also are left for seed, so 
much the better. When foxes have been specially 
attentive to nests in hedges, I have often found con- 
solation in such crops. A nest in a field growing 
the crops I have named is little more liable to suffer 
from weather than one in a hedge-side. Hence, by 
way of cheap, quick-growing, and effective part- 
ridge coverts, I do not see that anything can surpass 
the sowing of strips or patches of rye and autumn 
vetches at suitable intervals, and preferably on the 
higher parts of the fields. Certainly, elaborately 
