Mr J. B. Moyes, a Perth golfer, played a shot on Craigie Hill (Perth) course recently and his ball finished among some partridge eggs. Thereafter he was the innocent victim of a misunderstanding.
The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, it is understood, has lodged a protest against what is described as Mr Moyes's action in "playing a stroke from a partridge nest". Actually the nest was some distance from where the eggs lay, and the eggs were removed before Mr Moyes played the shot.
The steward of the Craigie Hill Club told a reporter yesterday that Mr Moyes's ball finished among some partridge eggs at the back of the green. The eggs had apparently been removed by children, for the nest was twenty yards away from where they were found. The eggs were cold, and it is obvious that they had been forsaken by the bird, but the greenkeeper removed them from around the ball to allow Mr Moyes to play a chip shot.
Mr Moyes is not the first golfer to be confronted by such a problem. Perhaps the most unusual incident of the kind recorded in the "Golfers' Handbook" concerns a Mrs Blackford at Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1923.
An approach shot landed in a bird's nest in a tree, and the player, after climbing the tree and taking a precarious stance among the branches, played a pitch shot to the green and halved the hole. It is not known whether the nest was empty at the time.
The Irish Times, July 10th, 1939.