Friday, May 27, 2011

Chukar Partridge

About three weeks ago I was out pruning the roses in our yard. I pruned the ones to the right of the entryway and then went down to prune the roses that we have on the left. As I was about finished, I moved close to the house and a Chukar Partridge flew up in the air about two feet in front of me and landed on our neighbor’s roof. I had not seen her before and we had not seen her around the house previously. I glanced at where she had flown from and saw a nest on the ground with eggs in it. I was surprised and so I went to the Internet to read about the nesting habits of Chukar Partridges.

Over the next two weeks we watched our little mother and the eggs. Most of the time she was there sitting on the eggs. Occasionally we would find the nest uncovered and the eggs lying there. We counted 12 and then 13 eggs. Then one day I discovered one of the eggs out in the flowerbed next to the post box. It was broken and there were some feathers around it. I immediately went to the nest and the mother Chukar was still there.


Then last week the mother seemed to disappear. The nest was uncovered. We continued to look for her, but never did discover her back on the nest. I told my good friend Bill Hammond about it and he said that he wanted to see if he could incubate the eggs. I said that we needed to font that the Wild Life Division to make sure that it was right with them. This did on Monday and they did not object.

Now the eggs are in a nice, warm, blue environment and we will see if anything hatches. The mother has not returned.


We really enjoy our Chukar Partridges. Last Year we had about 60 running around in the yard behind our house.

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