12 JUNE 1953, Page 7

Death in the Wind My keeper always looks a bit

glum when there is a high wind at this time of year. A lot of wild pheasant chicks are now about the size of sparrows and able to fly for a short distance, and he believes that, when a brood is disturbed, takes off and becomes scattered, some of the chicks are never reunited with the mother because of the wind : not so much because it carries them further than they meant to go as because the noise it makes in the undergrowth around them prevents them from hearing their mother's discreet clucking and her from hearing their benighted cheeps. I should think there is a good deal in this theory.