20 The Partridge Family 



Still, they lack the headlong dash of the old bird, 

 and taken as they flush are comparatively easy 

 marks. Your true sportsman does not enthuse 

 over them. What he wants to hear is that pecul- 

 iar hollow " Burr-r-r ! " which marks the rising of 

 a strong, fully developed bird. To the trained ear 

 this sound is genuine music, and no veteran will 

 mistake it for the less pronounced whirring of a 

 younger wing, no matter how large the owner of 

 that wing may appear to be. Trained eyes, too, 

 can almost invariably detect the sex of the flushed 

 bird. To the ordinary observer, the hen quail, 

 with the exception of the stripe over the eye and 

 the throat, is very like the male, but to the trained 

 eye there is a marked difference. The general 

 tone of the hen is brown, that of the male bluish 

 gray. The difference is slight, but it is there, 

 and a master of quail-shooting can detect it even 

 in the brief glimpse of a fast bird going straight- 

 away — of course in the open. 



The adult male is marked as follows: fore- 

 head, stripe over the eye and throat, white ; top 

 of head, a mixture of chestnut and black ; sides of 

 neck, prettily marked with chestnut, black, and 

 white (in many specimens the conspicuous stripe 

 over the eye is tinged with buff) ; general tone of 

 the back and wings, a mixture of chestnut, yellow- 

 ish brown, and gray blotched on middle of the 

 back with black ; a black mark surrounds the 



