Birds. 5427 



Partridge Swimming and Diving. — About three weeks since I fired a long shot at 

 a partridge, which fell, with a wing broken near the extremity, but otherwise little, if 

 at all, injured : it ran some distance, and sought concealment on the river bank. On 

 approaching with my dog, in its attempt to escape me, it half leaped, half fell into 

 the water. Once there it remained quiescent so long as a somewhat strong stream 

 carried it down, but, on approaching a still part, caused by a partial regression of the 

 current, it began to swim (I know no other word to describe the motion, — it was 

 exactly that of the water bird swimming) towards the bank: it still escaped me once 

 or twice: at last it extricated itself from the water, and was caught by my dog; he, 

 however, put it down before I was quite in a position to lay hold of it, and it got into 

 the water again. To prevent its getting out of my reach I struck it on the head with 

 a small stick I had in my hand, and stunned it: a convulsive motion of both wings 

 and legs ensued, sufficiently strong to send showers of water over me, and before 

 I could seize it, still under the influence of these convulsive struggles, it dived 

 completely, and was under water at least half a minute; and though the water was 

 certainly not less than ten or twelve inches deep, it stirred up quantities of mud from 

 the bottom, so as to make the surrounding water quite turbid. No wonder the dipper 

 and waterhen are able to walk under water, when a partridge's unconscious struggles 

 are so potent. — Id. 



Note on Pied Pheasants. — The old pied pheasant was hatched in 1846, and was 

 killed on the 22nd of December, 1856, therefore he must have been upwards of ten 

 years old. He was never seen more than two or three hundred yards from the copse, 

 of about twenty acres, in which he was bred. From 1847 to 1854, both years inclu- 

 sive, a brood or two of pheasants, with pied chickens intermixed, appeared in the copse 

 annually. Few of the pied birds arrived at maturity, and among these only two cocks, 

 neither of the cocks was seen after their first year, as they strayed, — as did most of the 

 hens, — and were killed on other farms in the neighbourhood. Not more than the old 

 cock and two pied hens were ever seen in the same spring. The cock has been saved 

 for the last year, and was shot unintentionally, in consequence of his being obscured 

 by the thick branches of a Scotch fir tree: he was healthy and active to the last. 

 I kept tame pheasants many years, and found that the males usually ceased to pro- 

 create at eight years, and the females at the same age, or a year earlier : exceptions, 

 in each direction, occasionally occur in both sexes. A considerable proportion of the 

 old hens, in a state of confinement, assume the plumage of the cock ; the change com- 

 monly commencing the year after they cease laying. — W. R. Rogers ; Burchetls, 

 Wisborough Green, January 3, 1857.* 



Occurrence of Sabine's Snipe (Scolopax Sabini) in Norfolk. — This extremely 

 rare species has just been added to the list of Norfolk birds, a specimen having been 

 killed at Kainham, near Fakenham, on the 17th of October last. This bird was shot 

 in a turnip-field by Martin T. Smith, Esq., M.P., and is now, I understand, in the 

 possession of his son, a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has had it 

 preserved by Mr. Baker, of that town. I believe not above five or six specimens of 

 this rare snipe have been met with in England, although more have been obtained 

 in Ireland; but the most curious fact respecting it is referred to by Mr. Yarrell, who 

 says, " Singular as it may appear, this species does not seem yet to have fallen into 



* Communicated by Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum. 



