COMMON PARTRIDGE 
245 
ready ; laying generally begins about the middle 
of April, and ten or twelve is the usual number 
of the eggs. They are light olive-brown, and 
vary a good deal in depth of shade. Sometimes 
more than one hen will lay in a nest, and two 
or more birds will occasionally even sit in com- 
pany on an extensive floor of their joint laying. 
The Pheasant will occasionally nest on some con- 
venient platform in a tree. The plumage of both 
cock and hen is too well known to need description. 
Their vegetable food is a varied mixture of acorns, 
berries, grain, etc., while they also eat a great 
quantity of snails, wireworms, and other more or 
less injurious insects. They roost in boughs of 
trees in a covert, this habit being most marked and 
regular in winter ; and just after sunset, in a frosty 
winter's afternoon, it is very interesting to see and 
hear them settle together on their perches, with a 
vast deal of fuss and crowing, to sleep out the 
period of fast-gathering darkness. 
COMMON PARTRIDGE. 
(Perdix cinerea.) 
The creaking note of the Partridge is a well- 
known sound just after sunset in the arable fields, 
especially in early spring, and the cock bird may 
