When shooting parties begin again strange stories are repeated about pheasants and partridges. We remember hearing a learned disquisition on the subject of the fox and the hen partridge; the argument was that the fox is only occasionally successful when he makes a grab at a hen partridge sitting on her eggs, and that the hen, after fluttering from the jaws of death, will return unconcernedly to her duties. Further, even if the fox were so lucky as to capture the hen, the cock partridge would most obligingly take up the sitting and hatch the eggs. But no case was cited where a fox had been known to attempt to catch a sitting cock partridge—from which the inference might be drawn that the fox has a special aversion to the sitting cock.
Much nonsense of this sort is swallowed with good faith by those not closely in touch with foxes and game. We have an old book called "The Life of a Fox: Written by Himself." In this we read that a sitting bird acquires a thinness and flavour which are abhorrent to the taste of a fox; nonsense guised as sense could hardly go further. It would be grossly disparaging to the fox's skill to say that he fails once in a hundred times when making a grab at a sitting bird; and we are sure that a cock partridge does not take up the duties of his wife as often even as a fox fails to bring off a catch. We have never known a cock partridge to take the place of his murdered mate on the nest, but every gamekeeper knows he will rear the brood when the hen is killed after hatching.
A Study in Perseverance
We have a pretty story to tell ourselves about the perseverance of partridges. In a district where few were found, a pair had left the fields and nested within a stone's-throw of the keeper's cottage. It stood in a green glade, sheltered on all sides by rambling old woods. For four successive seasons this partridge pair nested within a few yards of the same spot: and year after year something upset their plans, and spoiled all prospects of their hope of a covey—a hedgehog, rooks, inquisitive children, but, luckily, not a fox. The fifth season found the persevering birds trying again; their nest contained seventeen eggs. The site was an obvious one, but now the birds' luck turned. Just when it seemed that nothing could keep the nest from the eyes of any curious passers-by, a fine plant of hemlock sprang up to provide a screen and shelter. Every egg was then hatched, and every chick was reared to the flying stage. True, by September the young birds had been reduced until only nine were left. But as the keeper said, that was better than that a fox should have killed the old hen on her nest; and a family of nine was very creditable to a pair of five-year-old birds.
The Hut in the Woods
Your gamekeeper is a skilled cook, and his open-air kitchen is a place of curious interest. For the first five or six weeks of their lives young pheasants are regaled several times daily with meals of hard-boiled eggs, custard, biscuit-meal, oatmeal, canary-seed, greaves and rice—seasoned with spices. Look into the keeper's hut in the woods, and you will see quite a collection of sacks filled with choice foods—cracked maize, dari-seed, groats, rice, preparations of dried meat, and finely dressed meals of wheat and barley. When the birds have learned to go to roost only one meal a day is provided. In his kitchen the keeper prepares a thin meat soup, sometimes of sheeps' heads; this is boiled, then cooled, chopped lettuce and onion, and barley and other meals are added, and then the rations of the pudding-like mass are rolled into small pellets. Over the keeper's kitchen the keeper's wife has no jurisdiction. In some sheltered corner from which he can keep an eye on his birds he builds himself a fireplace of two parallel rows of bricks open at each end, so that he may burn long sticks and save himself the labour of chopping wood if pressed for time. Sometimes he will get the village blacksmith to fashion a sort of iron gallows from which to hang his great cooking-pots, each containing eight or nine gallons, and of no small weight. By November many keepers have cooked the last meal for their pheasants—others may be preparing a final supper, whistling till their jaws ache to call the birds to the meal—on the morrow to do their utmost to send the long-tails to destruction.