144 FRANK Schley's partridge and pheasant shooting. 



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all been melted, these birds no longer keep in large flocks, 

 but separate into smaller parties, and the mating-season 

 commences, during which their manners, especially those 

 of the male, are very peculiar and striking. A particular 

 locality is selected, to which they resort until incubation 

 has commenced. The males meet in this place, and engage 

 in furious battle with one another. At this season they are 

 especially conspicuous for their great pomposity of bearing ; 

 with tails outspread and inclined forward to meet the ex- 

 panded feathers of their neck, and with the globular, 

 orange-colored, bladder-like receptacles of air on their 

 necks distended to their utmost capacity, and issuing a pe- 

 culiar sound, spoken of as booming, these birds strut about 

 in the presence of one another with various manifestations 

 of jealous dislike and animosity, soon ending in fui'ious 

 contests. Their wings are declined, in the manner of the 

 Cock-Turkey, and rustle on the ground as the birds pass 

 and repass in a rapid manner; their bodies are depressed, 

 and their notes indicate their intense excitement. Upon 

 the appearance of a female answering to their calls, they 

 at once engage in their desperate encounters. They rise 

 in the air and strike at one another in the manner of a 

 Game Cock, and several engage in a miscellaneous scrim- 

 mage, until the weaker give wa}', and, one after another, 

 seek refuge in the neighboring bushes, the few remaining 

 victors discontinuing their contests as if from sheer ex- 

 haustion. The "booming" or "tooting" sounds made by 

 these birds is heard belbre daybreak, and also at all hours 

 before sunset, in places where they are abundant and tame ; 

 but where they are rare and wild they are seldom heard 

 after sunrise, and their nnn^tings then are in silence. Even 

 in the Fall the young males evince their natural pugnacity 

 by engaging in short l)atties, which their parents usually 

 interrupt and i)ut a stop to. This bird nests, according to 

 the locality in which it is met with, from the beginning of 

 A])ril to the last of May. In Kentucky. Mr. Audubon has 

 found their nests with eggs early in April, but the average 

 period there was the first of May. Their nests he describes 



