THE NORFOLK PARTRIDGE.
WHAT the grouse is to Scotland that the partridge is to Norfolk. The county is so full of excellent differ- ences, presenting such an attractive " inlay " of all kinds of natural features not often found close together, that to the modern visitor whose mind is attuned to the enjoyment of heath, wood, cornfield, marsh, forest, and fen it appeals at once, and irresistibly. But as the beauties of the moors of Westmoreland and Scotland failed to enchant either Defoe or the English proprietors of two centuries later until grouse- shooting opened their eyes to the charm of the heather, so it was the abundance and productiveness of the partridge- manors of Norfolk that first attracted the wealthy classes of England to the dry and invigorating earth and air of the county which Charles II. declared was only fit to be cut up into roads for the use of the country at large. From Sir Thomas Browne, one of the first of Norfolk naturalists, through a long line of distinguished sportsmen and ornitholo- gists, including Mr. Coke of Holkham, the late Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Thomas Clough Newsome of Hockwold, who kept alight the last embers of the passion for falconry, which his descen- dants have seen rekindled on a great scale, to the present Earl of Leicester and Lord Walsingham, the Norfolk-born land owners and residents have fully appreciated and used the extraordinary natural advantages of the county for producing immense quantities of this indigenous game bird. But the Royal Family, who were the. first to appreciate the advantages of the climate of the Isle of Wight for seaside residence and amusements, were also the first to see that as a centre for domestic sport in England. Norfolk was unrivalled. When the Prince of Wales bought Sandringham, an estate on the edge of the North Sea, surrounded by heaths, sandhills, light cultivation, and meal marshes, the world in general wondered what could have been the motive for such a choice. The cause might have been guessed. It was the evidence that this was the finest game country in England, given by the swarms of Norfolk partridges on the Sandringham cornfields, on the edges of Dersingham Heath, and among the tussocks and rough grasses of the Wolferton Marshes. This county is also the native home of the wild pheasant, which would exist were there no eggs taken up, and none of the present immense apparatus for rearing artificially. But the great head of partridges is native to the soil. On the best manors none are hand-reared except those eggs cut out when the grass and clever are mown, to meet which emergencies flocks of elegant little game bantams are kept, to be ready to act as foster-mothers to the diminutive partridges. To see such handsome, bold, attractive birds as partridges in . the number in which they exist on these estates is a very engaging object-lesson in bird-life. To learn the reasons of their numbers, and to take a hand in the autumn and winter partridge-driving, is a liberal education in the art of increasing and using the native game bird of cultivated England. The method by which they are shot is one which disturbs the ground less than any. other.' In driving the shots are nearly all clean "hit or miss." Those birds which are shot fall dead ; the others are untouched. The bags are also so large that the same ground is perhaps only driven twice or thrice in a season. Hence the birds, which when put up and driven over by the beaters fly so wild and fast in November, are very little concerned and most amazingly indifferent in view of a single intruder into their domains in spring, or before the shooting begins, or even in winter, except when the band of drivers, whom they justly suspect, appears on the distant sky-line. The writer has watched the coveys wake up and come out to feed at dawn on the Holkham marshes in such numbers that they almost rivalled the grouse on a Highland oat-field in the afternoon. They are very fond of the fresh- water marshes, where food abounds, and being sociable birds. when one covey has wakened up, crowed, shaken its .feathers down after they have got " out of curl" on the damp grass which they sleep on at night, and then flown to some favourite corner of the marsh, the other coveys come flying out of the mist wreaths and vapour screens, and down from the cultivated land just above, and join them, till perhaps fifty or sixty birds are there, crowing, chasing each other, feeding a little, and generally getting up their circulation. That the cock partridge is as proud of the horseshoe on his breast as the Argus pheasant is of the " eyes " on its wings is certain ; for when the cocks, with head erect, rush up either to the hens, or to meet another cock, they stick out their ornamental waistcoats in the most assertive and consequential fashion. and generally bear themselves with all the swagger of Sir Robert de Boots at Colonel Newcome's East Indian dinner. At the end of January, if the weather is mild, the bright red patch over the cock's eye appears, and he is in courting costume till long after he has got a wife and paired for the season. In a mild February and iu March the cock partridges do a great amount of very harmless fighting. About an hour before bedtime is spent in this amusement, which includes a great display of running power, trailing of wings, and clucking. If there are many old cocks left they doubtless drive the young birds off the ground ; but as in Nor- folk the old cocks are nearly always killed in the drives, the young ones soon settle their differences and pair. Then they become intensely domestic, devoted husbands, and excellent fathers of families. In the long March evenings on these great open Norfolk fields the pairs may be seen dotted all over the young wheat, feeding quietly in the evening, never separated by many yards' distance, more often by not more than a foot or two. The chalky hills of North Norfolk are often credited with holding the greatest stock. The late Mr. A. Stevenson considered that it was mainly on the blowing sands of the " breck country that they were found " in such enormous quantities. There, if not kept within due bounds by the sportsmen, this prolific race would overrun everything. Nor is it possible to estimate the number reared in localities so suited to their natural habits. • He also quotes Mr. Alfred Newton's opinion that if a censu of the birds round Elveden, near Thetford, were taken, the grey partridge would be found to be the most abundant species there. Since the growth of wheat has declined in this part of Norfolk, it has been found necessary to do some rough special cultivation to keep up the number of the partridges near tb heaths, an expense which actually repays itself in the value of the birds. The present writer inclines to think that the ground where the chalky and sandy land touches the fen, in North-West Norfolk, carries perhaps the highest number of head per acre; but the latter part of the journey, from Norwich to Lakenheath, past and through the most'famous partridge and game ground of the "hinterland" " of the county, all suggests unlimited capacity for producing game, and contains some of the wildest heaths, the most beautiful woods, and abuts on the greatest fen of England. Near Harling are great quadrangles of fern set in tall wood-belts, and beyond wild heaths. Then for miles the rail runs over Roudham Heath, the former home of the bustard, a waste of stony grass, heather, and fern, with small clumps of Scotch firs. Here the cultivation is too scanty to suit the partridge. Then on towards Thetford and Brandon, famous for Saxon Bishops, rabbits, and gunflints, the heaths are broken up into immense rectangles by Scotch firs, the firs which partly caused the disappearance of the bustard, who dislikes any vegetation he cannot get his head over. Then on by the Little Ouse, duck- haunted, past the endless covers of Santon Downham, and on to the real fen, to which the lands of Hockwold and Feltwell slope gently down. It is here that the partridges literally swarm. On the white hoar-frosted stubbles they feed in lines and strings of brown dots, like beads ; the grass-lands. turnip- lands, seed-lands, all alike hold them. Of three kinds of adjacent soil it is difficult to say which they prefer. Furthest from the fen is a light sandy loam, full of little shiny bits of gravel. On this eight hundred birds were shot in one day off less than eight hundred acres. Between this and the fen the land is heavier, and the chalk lies so close under that when the ditches are cleared out the water runs over a white floor. This ends in the black fen, where the soil blows in summer like clouds of soot. Yet on this fen, once all sedge, where the black terns and the bitterns nested, the partridge is probably as numerous as were ever the waders and ducks of the marsh. No other form of life; except the rats, which are carefully killed down, is destroyed' in any degree to make room for the partridges. The peregrine falcon regularly visits the fen, unshot•, and sometimes aids. in securing a• bag of teal or duck from the pondi. The sparrowhawks are discouraged, and weasels and stoats trapped, otherwise the long, thin hedges, the birds' only nesting-places, would be made unsafe for them. The Norfolk partridge is the best instance in this country of a natural increment of the soil properly encouraged and atilised. It costs the farmer nothing, and the landowner only very little, and for sport and as food has no rival.
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