The Towered Bird.
For upwards of twenty years it has been asserted that no towered bird
has been hit only in the head. It has become quite an article of faith
with some people that every towered bird is stifled by wounds or blood
in the organs of respiration. Quite lately it has been stated that it
has often been said that towering has been caused by a shot on the head,
but that this is never the case.
The writer has often fallen into this supposed error himself, and has
gone very fully into the subject. It is not only a very interesting
question in itself, but one that sportsmen should not be misled about.
At the last retriever trials there was reported to be a “towered bird,”
and upon the dog being sent for it a field away he found it quickly, but
the towered bird rose again and flew away, followed by the keeper’s
remark, that it was “a very lively dead bird.”
This shows that not all keepers are aware that towerers are not always
dead birds when they fall; for this keeper was surprised when the
towerer rose again; but I noticed that the judges were quite satisfied
that the escaped partridge was identical with “the towerer.” They did
not set the dog to hunt again, but turned their backs on the scene of
action, and credited the dog (which happened to win the stake) with the
find.
That bird had been hit in the head, not in the lungs, and he towered in
consequence. If he had been also wounded in the lungs he would have died
at the apex of his flight—they always do. It may be asked how I know
this, and my reply must be that I know it from the examination of many
towered birds of different kinds. Of course, I make no claim to be
telling experienced sportsmen anything they do not know already. I am
well aware that very many do know it, because I have gone out of my way
to ask them; but I think there is occasion for dealing fully with a
subject that has been misunderstood for twenty years.
This being so, I propose to glance, briefly, at the varying behaviour of
game when struck in different parts of the body; and this seems to be
all the more necessary, as wrong information is sure to cause many a
fruitless search, much loss of time, and perhaps some muttered thunder
directed against the supposed Ananias who saw the bird tower.
Young shooters are often confident that a towered bird is dead, and can
be picked up if looked for long enough. Probably they have read it, and
have confirmed the statement with a few observations of their own. The
partridge that is struck in the head usually falls at once, whether the
shot has actually pierced the brain or not, but this is by no means
invariable, as I have suggested above.
The several kinds of towerers behave as follows: A rap on the head from
a glancing shot may or may not damage the sight, but if it does not
completely stun the bird he will rise up and tower from the place where
the shot struck him; his is usually a very strong flight, and he is
likely to fly a good way, towering all the time, until the loss of
strength forces him to come down; he will not collapse at the apex of
his flight, but as he falls continue to beat his wings, more or less
slowly, nearly or quite to the ground. When he reaches the earth he may
die, or he may sit muffled up in a dazed condition. Generally he can be
approached and killed with a stick, but sometimes he will have a blind
side and a wideawake one; and it is not difficult to approach him by
selecting his dark side. In no case is such a bird likely to fly until
his enemy is within a yard or two of him. Often he makes no attempt to
save his own life, and many times I have allowed a retriever to pick up
such a bird, having the gun ready in case of his blunder. On several
occasions, probably not more than three, the towered bird on being
disturbed has _towered again_; but generally if he is able to fly at all
he is able to see where he is going to and to get away. Many birds of
this kind have no shot in them whatever, as I have proved by
_post-mortem_ examination; others have proved the same thing by being as
lively as ever upon being approached. Once, a few years ago, when a
controversy on this subject raged, X-ray photographs of three towerers
were published, but shot pellets could only be traced in two of them,
and consequently both sides claimed the victory. It is very likely that
laboratory examination never will find a shot pellet in the head of a
towerer, but that only proves that when a shot _enters_ the head it is
generally enough to bring the bird down at once. It is quite another
matter when a shot pellet strikes the head and does not _enter_. Then
the state of towering is frequently instantly produced.
This kind of wound, then, may be recognised by the towering of the bird
from the instant it was struck, also by some movement in its wings in
descent, and lastly, by its attitude of squatting when found upon the
ground.
A bird struck in the lungs or stifled by blood in the windpipe behaves
very differently. On receiving the shot it generally, but not always,
drops its legs as if they were broken; that will generally prove not to
have been the case. Then it flies on, from fifty to five hundred yards,
with nothing apparently the matter, except the dropped legs, then it
suddenly begins to rise or tower. This towering appears from the
shooter’s position in the rear, and far behind, to be straight up, but
that is optical deception, caused by the position of the shooter
directly in the rear. The angle of elevation is really about the same as
that of the head-struck bird, although, as the latter rises from only
forty or fifty yards away, his angle of elevation looks more oblique
than that of the bird a quarter of a mile away.
The stifled bird rises in spite of the fact that his head does not point
upwards like that of a pheasant rising to top the trees. The partridge
rises without any appearance of change of angle in his body, and when he
reaches the apex he does not turn over backwards, as has been said of
him, but starts to fall from the position of ordinary horizontal flight.
You will generally find him dead upon his back, but the reason of this
is that the resistance of his outstretched wings in falling turns him
over, and they cease to resist the air when he is on his back. It is a
case of movement in the direction of least resistance.
A bird which is brought down instantly by a shot in the head generally
jumps about or flaps his wings when on the ground; one would think that
he could not do this if he was entirely unconscious, but if he has any
degree of consciousness the head-struck towerer must have very much
more, just as the stifling bird has, so there must be many degrees of
semiconsciousness in wounded partridges.
It very often happens that the most experienced will mistake the dead
bird’s fall for that of a runner, and a runner’s for that of a dead
bird, but the latter is less frequent. The runner generally flaps a wing
as he falls, shows the white of the other one and holds his head up; but
all these signs taken together do not prove him to be a runner, because
he may have had a lung shot as well, and then he will die upon the
ground. Again, a runner may deceive in the other way, he will sometimes
fall as if unconscious and then recover and run away. The runner which
is just wing-tipped and can fly a long way, sinking slightly until he
touches the ground, will not fly again, but generally proves to be a
very strong pedestrian indeed.
Several different kinds of hits cause birds to drop their legs
instantly, and I fancy that when this happens they are always found
where they fall, near or far. The most common of these is the lung-shot
bird, then there is the back-broken bird, which does the same, and may
also be known by the wobble of his flight—an up-and-down movement, like
a boat in a heavy sea. Then there is the leg-broken bird which is likely
enough to fly again, but not to run, that day at least. A broken-legged
bird generally only has one leg down, whereas a dead bird generally
drops both, no matter how far he is to fly before he dies. I think a
bird very seldom bleeds to death from a shot wound in the neck vein, but
probably this must happen sometimes. I am inclined to think that when
the only wound is in the blood-vessels of the neck the bird would fly so
far, losing blood all the way; that when he was picked up the cause of
death would not be recognised, and I think this is the reason why this
kind of wound is so seldom seen. It does not follow that it infrequently
occurs.
A shot which breaks the spinal cord is as instantaneous in effect as one
which enters the brain, and brings the bird down at once, but not with
what is called a broken neck, for I never saw a broken neck in grouse,
partridge, or pheasant, unless the keepers had wilfully done it in order
to kill a wounded bird. It is a very bad plan to kill any game this way,
and especially grouse, for without the bone of the neck to suspend them
on the stick the weight often causes the body to drop and be lost in the
heather. The skin alone is not strong enough to carry, at any rate, the
young birds, especially when boys drag their feet and bodies through the
tall heather.
It has been said that the reason partridges “tower” is that they are
obliged to lift their heads upwards in order to get their breath, and
that their bodies follow where their heads point. This can hardly be the
reason, because we have two kinds of “towerers” to deal with, and
besides, many a blackcock on taking wing and going away horizontally,
nevertheless holds up his head and looks at his disturber over his back,
but he does not go upwards in consequence. I do not believe that the
upward flight is caused either by any rudder-like action of the tail,
although that is, perhaps, possible.
Probably the wings are so set by Nature that their beats not only
counteract gravity, but something more than this, and it possibly
requires the will of the bird in steering to make him keep a horizontal
course. The concave undersurface offers more resistance to the air than
the upper convex surface. Hitherto I have considered that this
arrangement was meant to negative gravity when the bird was urging its
forward course, but when one remembers that young birds with half the
power of flight of the old ones nevertheless can rise quite easily, and
seem to maintain a horizontal course quite comfortably—that is, their
inferior wings in ordinary up-and-down beats are equal to the resistance
of gravity—consequently, it appears almost certain that the ordinary
beats of better wings are much more than equal to the resisting of
gravity. Or, in other words, if partridges in a state of health did not
wilfully hug the ground they would rise up like “towered” birds.
I wonder whether this is the reason that day birds (which appear to
migrate in their sleep, and certainly cannot travel by night at any
other time than when the instinct is upon them) migrate at great
altitudes. That is to say, whether they go up because they cannot help
it. If so, there would be a certain altitude for each kind of bird where
the wing beats influence, on the more rarified air, in sending the bird
up, and the lessened power of gravity, would become equal, and at that
altitude the bird would travel forward without the will being called
into request to keep a horizontal course. Balloonists tell us that at
great heights birds thrown out fall like stones, so that there must be
an altitude where ordinary wing action ceases to overcome gravity. In
any case the partridge goes upward, whether either head or lungs deprive
him of part of his senses, probably of all the sense of direction except
that one of keel downwards, that no bird ever seems to lose as long as
he is alive.
Another reason for believing that the natural up-and-down wing beats
would take any healthy bird upwards as well as forwards is to be found
in the necessity of the moult. If the full wing beats only kept the
horizontal course then it would probably happen that the loss of a
single flight feather would have the effect that gravity would gradually
overcome the horizontal tendency and pull the bird downwards; but that
does not appear to be true, and this is additional reason for believing
that the up-and-down wing beats with a horizontal keel much more than
overcome gravity, and that consequently when a bird cannot direct its
own course it goes upwards, because it is built to do so, and to
overcome the downward drag of gravity by the mere up-and-down wing
action and a level “keel.”