Sensitive Birds A certain lack of guns, ammunition and beaters
has saved the life of very many game birds—grouse, pheasants and partridges —in this exceptional year ; but on one farm at any rate the birds have not been so lucky. A bomb that fell in an open field not far from two labourers' cottages killed with the shock of the explosion the whole of a covey of twelve birds. It is the habit of partridges to " jug " in very close proximity, and this time a protective device proved their complete ruin. A considerable number of pheasants and rabbits have been killed, the birds only by shock. They seem to be peculiarly sensitive in this regard. About hares and rabbits I have little evidence, but in 1914 I came upon three hares in one Belgian field that had all been killed, so far as I could determine, by the shock of shell-bursts the day before.
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