206 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
keen-scented prowlers of the woods. But her colours 
blend so perfectly with those of the dead leaves on the 
forest floor, and she sits so closely, and remains so motion- 
less among the shadows, that she escapes the sharp-eyed 
Hawk. She gives out so little scent that the dog, skunk, 
or fox passes quite near, unnoticing. 
“The Grouse does not naturally fear man; more than 
once, in the wilderness of the northwest, a single bird has 
walked up to within a few feet of me. They will sit on 
limbs just above one’s head, almost within reach, and 
regard one curiously, but without much alarm. Usually, 
in Massachusetts, when a human being comes near the 
nest, the mother bird whirs loudly away. She has well 
learned the fear of man; but, in a place where no shooting 
was permitted, a large gang of men were cutting under- 
brush, while a Partridge, sitting there, remained quietly 
on her nest as the men worked noisily all about her. 
Another bird, that nested beside a woods road, along which 
I walked daily, at first would fly before I had come within 
a rod of her; but later she became confiding enough to 
sit on her nest while six persons passed close beside her. 
Evidently the bird’s facility in concealing her nest consists 
in sitting close and keeping her eggs well covered. Her 
apparent faith in her invisibility is overcome only by her 
fear of man or her dread of the fox. When the fox is seen 
approaching directly toward her, she bristles up and flies 
at him, in the attempt to frighten him with the sudden 
roar of her wings and the impetuosity of her attack; but 
Reynard, although at first taken aback, cannot always be 
deceived by such tricks; and the poor bird, in her anxiety 
to defend her nest, only betrays its whereabouts. Prob- 
