264 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
teresting to witness the watchful solicitude with which 
they are cherished by the parent when she first leads 
them from the nest in quest of food, glancing in every 
direction, in her intense anxiety, lest harm befall them. 
She clucks matronly to bring them to brood under her 
wings, or to call them together to scramble for a choice 
morsel of food she has found. Should danger threaten, 
a different note alarms them; they scatter in every di- 
rection, running, like little mice, through the grass till 
each finds a hiding place; meanwhile, she exposes her- 
self to attract attention, till, satisfied of the safety of 
the brood, she whirrs away and awaits the time when 
she may reassemble her family. In the region where 
I observed the birds in June and July, they almost in- 
variably betook themselves to the dense, resistant un- 
derbrush, which extends for some distance out- 
ward from the wooded streams, seeking safety in this 
all but impenetrable cover, where it was nearly impossi- 
ble to catch the young ones, or even to see them, until 
they began to top the bushes in their early short flights. 
The wing and tail feathers sprout in a few days, and 
are quite well grown before feathers appear among 
the down of the body. The first coveys seen able to 
rise on wing were noticed early in July; but by the 
middle of this month most of them fly smartly for short 
distances, being about as large as quails. Others, how- 
ever, may be observed through August, little, if any, 
larger than this, showing a wide range of time of 
hatching, though scarcely warranting the inference of 
two broods in a season. 
