Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/411

Rh along just before the dog's nose till she had drawn him to a considerable distance, when she took wing, and flew still farther off, but not out of the field: on this the dog returned to me, near which place the young ones lay concealed in the grass, which the old bird no sooner perceived than she flew back again to us, settled just before the dog's nose again, and by rolling and tumbling about, drew off his attention from her young, and thus preserved her brood a second time. I have also seen, when a kite has been hovering over a covey of young partridges, the old birds fly up at the bird of prey, screaming and fighting with all their might to preserve their brood.—.

A HYBRID PHEASANT. Lord Stawell sent me from the great lodge in the Holt a curious bird for my inspection. It was found by the spaniels of one of his keepers in a coppice, and shot on the wing. The shape, air, and habit of the bird, and the scarlet ring round the eyes, agreed well with the appearance of a cock pheasant; but then the head, and neck, and breast, and belly were of a glossy black: and though it weighed three pounds three ounces and a half, the weight of a full-grown cock pheasant, yet there were no signs of any spurs on the legs, as is usual with all grown cock pheasants, who have long ones. The legs and feet were naked of feathers and therefore it could be nothing of the grouse kind. In the tail were no bending feathers such as cock pheasants usually have, and are characteristic of the sex. The tail was much shorter than the tail of a hen pheasant, and blunt and square at the end. The back, wing, feathers, and tail, were all of a pale russet curiously streaked somewhat like the upper parts of a hen partridge. I returned it with my verdict, that it was probably a spurious or hybrid hen bird, bred between a cock pheasant and some domestic fowl. When I came to talk with the keeper who brought it, he told me that some pea-hens had been known last summer to haunt the coppices and coverts where this mule was found.