Cuckfield

A singular discovery has been made by a well-known gamekeeper at Penland. Whilst walking through a cornfield on the farm he came across two partridges, who were taking great interest and care in a young ‘chick’, which they had reared in a hen's nest and deserted their own. It is supposed that after laying the egg, the hen had marched off, and that the partridges having suddenly become possessed of the nest, had hatched the young ‘chick’, hence so close an attachment.

Mid Sussex Times, 10 August 1881.

illustration: Chełmoński Partridges in the snow (detail). National Museum in Warsaw. Wikimedia public domain image.

Contributed by Malcolm Davison.