152 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
fifteen. They leave the nest at once and nimbly follow 
the careful mother, as her chickens follow a domestic 
hen. She leads them quietly through the woods, teach- 
ing them the while how to live their lives and how to 
keep themselves safe from their enemies. At her call 
of alarm each chick sinks down on the ground and dis- 
appears, looking like a leaf, a bit of stick or a pebble. 
No one can recognize them as living things, and their 
only danger is that some clumsy person may step on 
one of them. Meantime the mother, with feathers erect 
and trailing wings, is limping in front of the intruder, 
falling down, pushing herself along on her breast, pant- 
ing as if in the very agony of death, often “growling” 
or “whining” in the effort to lure the enemy away from 
the brood. Usually she succeeds. No dog, and few 
boys and men, can resist the temptation to catch a 
partridge. The pursuer runs forward and almost 
grasps her, but his approach seems to give her a little 
strength and she flutters feebly forward. A few steps 
more and she will be his; but still she evades him, and 
presently, after having gone thirty or forty yards, she 
rises on strong wing and, swift as a bullet, darts off 
among the tree trunks. If the pursuer returns to the 
place where he first saw her, sits down and remains 
there quiet, after a time he will see her return on foot, 
call together her little brood and start off again on her 
travels. 
In Captain Bendire’s admirable work, so often cited, 
Manly Hardy, after describing the actions of the 
mother bird, says: 
