HAUNTS AND HABITS OF PARTRIDGES AND WHERE POUND. 81 



found most frequently in thick cover, where they can pro- 

 tect themselves from the cold and wind, and where they 

 are exposed to the sun, as in second growth wood, along 

 hill sides that are exposed to the south, where there are 

 patches of grass in hollows where the rag-weed is rank and 

 thick, and along the edges of wood, thicket, and swamp, 

 where there are patches of weeds, grass, and briars. In 

 hot, dry weather they most frequently resort to lOw ground, 

 along swamjis, creeks and ditches, in moist and cool places. 

 When the day is wet and cold they remain on their roost 

 until late in the morning. If pleasant and fair they leave 

 their roosting places, and are on the move at a very early 

 hour. If snow should fall they remain on their roosting 

 places until the day is far advanced, and are often covered 

 up by a deep fall. When the snow is very deep and drift- 

 ed, they shelter and protect themselves along the sides of 

 hills that are grown up with wood, and are exposed to the 

 south, and along the streams and creek banks, where 

 there are always more or less patches of bare ground, and 

 where the snow soon melts. In other localities they resort 

 to swamps, thickets, clearings, brushwood, thick sedge 

 grass cover, and in the coi-ners of the worm fences that 

 are grown up with weeds and briars, and here they often 

 remain closely huddled together, in their snowy prisons, 

 sometimes for days. 



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