56 THE GREY PARTRIDGE. 



a few feathers, or a few leaves, to a tolerably substantial pad- 

 nest of grass and leaves. It is usually placed on the ground, 

 under some large clod in a ploughed field, under a bush, or in 

 a tuft of grass, but is sometimes fixed in the lower branches 

 of some dense thorny shrub as much as three feet from the 

 ground. Typically I should say the nest was a shallow depres- 

 sion well concealed under a bush or in a large tuft of high 

 grass, and more or less neatly and thickly lined with grass. 



I have never found more than nine eggs, and I have more 

 than a dozen notes of finding only six, seven, or eight much-in- 

 cubated eggs. 



Captain G. F. L. Marshall writes from the Saharanpur 

 district : — 



"The Grey Partridge breeds here from March till May. 

 I saw a covey of young birds, about a week old, about 

 the middle of April ; again, on 7th April, I found seven fresh 

 eggs, on the 23rd April I found eight slightly-set eggs, and 

 on the 17th May I again found seven slightly-set eggs. In 

 one case, the eggs were laid on a rough platform of grass and 

 leaves in the middle of a tuft of high reed grass about eight- 

 een inches from the ground ; in a second, the eggs were on the 

 ground at the foot of a tuft of grass ; and in the third case, 

 the eggs were in a cup-shaped hollow sunk in the ground, lined 

 very neatly with feathers and soft leaves, in the middle of 

 a little korounda bush which was growing on the top of a tiny 

 mound." 



Mr. A. Anderson says : — 



" The Grey Partridge lays from six to nine eggs in April and 

 May ; the eggs are deposited in a hollow, which the bird scrapes 

 out, most generally under the shelter of a clump of scrub jungle, 

 and the standing grass is trodden down, which does for a nest 

 lining. 



" On the 4th April 1871, when out coursing on the chur lands 

 opposite the Station of Fatehgarh, I flushed a ' Grey' which 

 was feeding in an open field. It struck me at once that this 

 was the male, and that the female must be sitting somewhere, 

 because these birds invariably go in pairs, and this was their 

 breeding season. Forming a line with my coolies, I beat every 

 conceivable bit of cover (there was not a crop standing for miles), 

 including a few clumps of Sarpat grass which grew in the form 

 of a hedge. Giving it up as a bad job, I rode alongside of this 

 grass hedge (it had been charred), and looking down into the 

 centre of each clump, soon discovered what at first appeared 

 a hare in her form, but which, on closer inspection, proved to 

 be the Hen Partridge. The grass was again well beaten, and, 

 as a last resort, handfuls of earth and small stones were shower- 

 ed in on her from above, but without avail. Seeing how futile 

 were all my efforts to flush the Partridge, I decided on cap- 

 turing her on her nest, which was effected by my horse-cloth- 



