Common Pheasants are occasionally found having a large portion, or even the whole, of their plumage white. These, though highly ornamental when mixed with the common sort, are not prized, owing to their being a more conspicuous mark for poachers. The 'Ringed Pheasant' occasionally shot in English preserves is not, as some maintain, a distinct species; it differs from the typical form of the bird only in that the neck is partially surrounded by a narrow white collar passing from the back of the neck to the sides, but not meeting in front.
Face, eyebrows, and throat, bright rust-red; behind the eye a naked red skin; neck, breast, and flanks, ash colour with black zigzag lines, and on the feathers of the flanks a large rust-red spot; low on the breast a chestnut patch shaped like a horseshoe; upper parts ash-brown with black spots and zigzag lines; scapulars and wing-coverts darker; quills brown, barred and spotted with yellowish red; tail of eighteen feathers, the laterals bright rust-red; beak olive-brown; feet grey. _Female_--less red on the face; head spotted with white; upper plumage darker, spotted with black; the horseshoe mark indistinct or wanting. Length thirteen inches. Eggs uniform olive-brown.
Very few, even of our common birds, are more generally known than the Partridge. From the first of September to the first of February, in large towns, every poulterer's shop is pretty sure to be decorated with a goodly array of these birds; and there are few rural districts in which a walk through the fields will fail to be enlivened by the sudden rising and whirring away of a covey of Partridges, in autumn and winter; of a pair in spring. At midsummer they are of less frequent appearance, the female being too busily occupied, either in incubation or the training of her family, to find time for flight; and at this season, moreover, the uncut fields of hay, clover, and corn afford facilities for the avoiding of danger, by concealment rather than by flight. The habits of the Partridge, as of the Grouse, are especially terrestrial. It never flies, like the Lark, for enjoyment; and as it does not perch in trees it has no occasion for upward flight. Still, there are occasions when Partridges rise to a considerable distance from the ground, and this seems to be when they meditate a longer flight than usual.