Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/183

 CHAPTER XII

IN AN OUTPOST OF THE RIF

HANKS to the graciousness of General de Chambrun, who knew of my love for shooting, I was invited to go out with a party of officers for my first day on the African field. Though a year at my desk in Warsaw had filched from me much of the endurance I had gained during my wanderings and hard life on the plains and in the mountains of Asia, it had not taken my enthusiasm for a new discovery in ornithology, which came with the first partridge out of the many which I subsequently shot during my African trip. The bird proved to be a rock-partridge, the Caccabis petrosa, or Perdix rubra, and, to my surprise, was constantly flushed from the branches on the shady side of olive- and fig-trees, a fact which was explained to me by the French officers as a question of defense by the birds against the numerous foxes and jackals which hunted them relentlessly. They added also that there was no other species of the partridge found in the north of French Africa and that one must go to the edge of the Sahara for the gray variety, which they designate locally as the English partridge. As a matter of fact, I later came upon a covey of these latter birds between the oases of Berguent and Figig.