UPLAND GAME BIRDS LG. 
they blend in coloring with the shadows on the pine 
needles under the leaves of the “ misery ” that although I 
knew they were there, and dared not step for fear of 
crushing them, I was not sharp enough to discover them. 
No doubt a thorough search would have been successful, 
but this a dread of injuring them forbade me to make. 
So picking up the one which had crouched motionless 
beside a leaf and which was really not much larger than 
my thumb, I contented myself with trying to solve the 
mystery of how so much bird ever grew in that small 
shell, half of which would scarcely cover his head, 
Once fairly in my hand, he cuddled down perfectly con- 
tented to let me fit the empty shell to his fat little body, 
as if he knew he was out of that for good. He was a 
funny little ball of fluffy down, with a dark stripe down 
his back and a lesser one on each side of that. Mean- 
while the adult bird had disappeared, and there was no 
choice but to put the youngster back in the nest and go 
onmy way. But I had learned two things, — that affairs 
move rapidly in the partridge household, and that hu- 
man eyes are seldom a match for a bird’s instinct. 
Most interesting of the many characteristics of the 
Plumed Partridge is the habit of migration into the 
valleys by the first of September each year, and back to 
the elevations in the early spring. Scarcity of food does 
not drive them to more fertile foraging grounds, for in 
the spring they return while yet there is snow. Unlike 
their relatives, these birds do not band together in large 
flocks, and seldom more than two broods are to be found 
in the same cover. Mr. Edwyn Sandys says: ‘ The call 
