VERMIN AND TRAPPING 85 
of the neat little bird sitting on her treasures, 
and gives a gleeful squawk; then, with a regular 
fanfare of squawking, its egg-thirsty companions 
gather round the nest. Yet somehow or another 
they seem to hesitate to start on their unholy feast, 
though they strut around with a great show of bold- 
ness and much more squawking. The partridge 
has hissed at them! A little partridge hen, save 
for a bit of a beak weaponless, but full of quiet 
pluck, has refused to leave her post at the demand 
of a score or so of robbers, each with a bill powerful 
enough to brain her at a blow, but each in a blue- 
black funk. Again the partridge hisses and ruffles 
her feathers. The foremost of the besieging throng 
feels it an unwise honour to lead the attack, and 
flops into the air to take a safer place behind its 
clamouring comrades, and squawks the more vigor- 
ously that the business should be proceeded with. 
At last, worn out by the cowardly buffetings of the 
merciless throng, the partridge is evicted from her 
nest, and with a wrangling chorus of triumphant 
squawks the villains guzzle the eggs. That is when 
I could use an automatic gun. When I did get a 
chance at a rookery, much as | hated the job as 
sport, I did things thoroughly. This reminds me 
of a lucky coincidence. The owner of a rookery 
had let too many young rooks fly away—at least, I 
thought so—and as I was passing a clump of trees 
in one of my fields in the late evening out flopped a 
