31 AUGUST 1945, Page 14

Birds and Wires Haa the admirable device of putting corks

or other visible warnings on telegraph wires quite. " fallen into desuetude," in the phrase of ,an Oxford Don accounting.for the dunes he had neglected?. My experience is that more and more .birds kill themselves on the svires,:including some of this year's young partridges. One old man of Sussex used to argue that a good argument in favour of the theory of inherited .memory was that birds had learnt to avoid wires. Is there any truth izr.his preniise, let alone his conclusion? I once saw no fewer than seven partridges out of one covey kill themselves on tekgraph wires along the, Cambridge- Huntingdon road. This was in ball a gale of wind. Pheasants, so far as my experience goes, often hit•the wires, but seldom suffer seriously.