24 
NATURE NOTES 
they are quite prepared for both fighting and courtship, and in 
a very few days the silence now reigning over the grand old 
Royal Park will be broken by the angry roaring challenges of 
the stags, and the loud clashing of their antlers in combat. 
Indeed, even now a loud bellowing sound very like the 
roaring of a bull comes to my ears, and at the sound my thoughts 
fly westward to the tors and valleys of Exmoor, the home of 
the wild red deer. It was the challenge of a stag I just heard. 
Ah, there he stands in solitary grandeur, half hidden by the 
bracken under the big beech tree yonder, now lifting his 
splendidly antlered head to roar out his hoarse challenge of 
defiance, now angrily tearing up and tossing the bracken high 
in the air. This stag has become wild and restless, and will not 
allow me to approach sufficiently near to count the number of 
points he carries, and unfortunately I have no glasses with me, 
but as far as I am able to judge, he boasts as fine a pair of 
antlers as I have seen for many a long day, and oh that I were 
gifted with the touch of the painter to depict this splendid 
creature as he stands broadside on to me amongst the high 
bracken and the giant timber trees. 
As I struggle through the dense fern covert on my way to 
one of the enclosed preserves lying just above Pen ponds, a 
covey of fourteen strong partridges get up with a loud “ whurr ” 
within twenty yards of me. Instinctively I raise my walking 
stick and exclaim : “ A pretty right and left,” for I feel certain 
that a brace of the little brown birds would have been accounted 
for had I but carried my favourite old “ 12 bore” instead of an 
ash-plant. 
Surely that strong covey should augur well for the head of 
partridges in Richmond Park this season in spite of the unsatis- 
factory reports from many parts of the kingdom. Indeed, one 
of the keepers of Wimbledon Common, which almost adjoins 
Richmond Park, informed me a few weeks ago that this would 
prove almost a record year with him and his confreres, not only as 
regards partridges, but for pheasants, hares and rabbits also. 
Hundreds, nay thousands, of rabbits, many of them only half 
grown, are sitting outside the covert, with here and there a 
perfectly black specimen, appearing strangely conspicuous 
amongst his grey brethren. Pressing the back of my hand 
against my lips I imitate the shrieking sound a rabbit makes 
when snared, or caught by a stoat or weasel, and now begins 
such a stampede of “ cotton-tails” from every patch of bracken 
and tuft of grass, that for a few seconds the very ground seems 
to be alive with them ; but the rush is soon over and not a 
rabbit is there to be seen anywhere round this particular covert, 
for they have disappeared into their burrows, or into the safe 
harbourage afforded them in the dense undercovert. 
“ Hicko, hicko, hicko,” shrieks out a green woodpecker at 
me, as I pass under a fine old elm, amongst the topmost and 
decaying branches of which he has been feasting upon beetles, 
