Birds. 



6013 



are frequently lost in such places in the earlier portion of the season : 

 they then try the patience of the clog very severely ; he is kept so long 

 drawing and pointing, from minute to minute, and with no apparent 

 result, that at last the most steady dog is disposed to rush in : hence 

 many sportsmen are disinclined to use the pointer at all in seeking a 

 wounded bird. A dog I have shot to a good deal is remarkably 

 steady, and his fault is rather in over caution than the want of it; so 

 much so that I can hardly at times get him to advance except in the 

 most tediously careful way : but I have seen him so worried, in high 

 potatoes, by the everlasting running and dodging of a winged bird, 

 which he could never see after w^orking it up and down the rows for a 

 long time, that on coming on to the scent of fresh birds in another 

 part of the field, or in another field, or possibly even another day, he 

 required to be restrained from rushing in as soon as he found the 

 birds were running. 



Partridges only winged, or not much hurt otherwise, usually rejoin 

 the covey at nightfall about their usual feeding place, and may be 

 seen in company with them sometimes for wrecks afterwards. If they 

 are much hurt it is probable they hide in some hedge, and are soon 

 found and killed by some of the common vermin " of the fields, 

 whether four-legged or feathered. It is remarkable how very seldom 

 a bird much attenuated by a former wound is met with by the shooter : 

 any one who observes the tracks of the stoat, the polecat, and more 

 rarely the rat, in the snow, together wdth those of the magpie and the 

 carrion and hooded crows, and remembers how these birds are 

 assisted in their unintermitting search for food by their powder of 

 flight, can easily understand the reason. I do not think that a bird 

 wounded, so that its recovery would be either tedious or uncertain, 

 ever lives many hours. 



I have sometimes been much astonished at the vast quantity of 

 feathers seen on the ground where a partridge has fallen. Usually 

 (unlike the ringdove, which parts with its feathers with extraordinary 

 facility and in great quantities, a fall against a tree or through the 

 branches of a larch causing them, even those of the tail, to fly about 

 in clouds) a feather or two is all that marks where the bird has fallen, 

 unless so near the shooter as to have been much cut with the shot; 

 but occasionally the feathers lie in handfuls, as if the bird, in some 

 paroxysm of agony, had torn them off* itself. The first time I noticed 

 this was in the case of a bird which, as 1 and my attendant both sup- 

 posed, had fallen dead after flying some distance from the point at 

 which it had been shot at. Under the impression that " that bird 



