* * * * Congregated Coveys A phenomenon quite new
to me at this date in the year astonished many observers on "the First." The partridges had packed. I saw one pack of at least fifty birds fly high and strongly over a belt of tall elms and they were out of sight before they pitched. Presently another pack of thirty odd was flushed. It is, of course, common enough for coveys to join together late in the year in the hungry months. Some naturalists say that the habit is nature's way of preventing in-breeding ; but it is much more prevalent in country where food is scarce and the land bare. Many people noted an abnormal tendency to pack last year ; and as a rough general rule the bigger the pack the longer and wilder the flights. Such packing has always been regarded as an event belonging to the end of the year. The amalgamation of three or four coveys and flights of great distance are quite foreign to the psychology of early September. There are some who maintain that new habits of agriculture are developing new habits in the bird, which is essentially a bird of the well-cultivated field. "The better the farming the more the birds" was an old Norfolk saying. A well-engrooved Darwinian might argue that packing is a method of survival. It altogether defeats the sportsman behind the hedge, or the walker whose ideal is the broken covey. The partridges with the strongest instinct for packing are the surest survivors.
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