COMMON PARTRIDGE 
many birds, and the first named especially have a reprehensible vi^ay of 
taking sitting hens off their nests. Hawks, especially sparrow-hawks, 
are sometimes troublesome, and carry off a number of the chicks. Rooks, 
crows, jackdaws and magpies steal numbers of eggs, but the jay is com- 
paratively harmless, and usually confines its attentions to the eggs of 
passerine birds, such as thrushes and blackbirds. 
Diseases . — Partridges suffer from various diseases, but the most 
common is that known as gapes, a parasitic worm which attacks the 
windpipe, and frequently causes great mortality among the young birds. 
Like the young of grouse, pheasants, fowls, etc., they also suffer from the 
ravages of Coccidiosisy which frequently kills numbers of young birds 
especially among those reared by hand. 
W. R. OGILVIE-GRANT. 
147 
