Yet it is hardly fair to compare pheasants to partridges. The
difference in their habits of life makes it necessary that partridges
should learn to use their wings more quickly than pheasants. They
will fly when no larger than starlings, but pheasants grow as big as
full-grown partridges before making much use of their wings. Partridges
mature the more quickly: hatched in mid-June they are nearly full grown
by September, while pheasants, born in May, are still in their baby
stage in October. Then the habit of the partridges to roost in coveys
on the ground fosters the instinct to spring into the air and fly on
the first sign of danger, all in a covey acting as one bird for mutual
protection. There is some little excuse for the young pheasants that
butt into wire with such foolish persistency--they are so near to the
wire that their legs have no chance to launch them fairly into the
air. While the desire of a pheasant, on meeting wire outside a wood,
is to pass through into the covert, the idea of the partridge is to
turn about, and fly back to the fields whence it came. The effect of a
line of wire-netting on wild creatures seems to be that they imagine
they are enclosed on all sides. A half-grown leveret cantered before us
for quite two miles alongside netting to the left of him; only after
covering this distance did it seem to dawn upon him that by turning to
the right he might go his way to freedom.
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