92 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



in the dead cranberry leaves, the grass and stubble 

 ruins, under a little alder. The old bird went off at last 

 from under us ; low in the grass at first and with wings 

 up^ making a worried sound which attracted other birds. 

 I frequently noticed others afterward flying low over 

 the meadow and alighting and uttering this same note 

 of alarm. There were only four eggs in this nest yes- 

 terday,^ and to-day, to C.'s surprise, there are the two 

 eggs which he left and a young peetweet beside ; a gray 

 pinch of down with a black centre to its back, but al- 

 ready so old and precocious that it runs with its long 

 legs swiftly off from squatting beside the two eggs, and 

 hides in the grass. We have some trouble to catch it. 

 How came it here with these eggs, which will not be 

 hatched for some days ? C. saw nothing of it yesterday. 

 J. Farmer ^ says that young peetweets run at once like 

 partridges and quails, and that they are the only birds he 

 knows that do. These eggs were not addled (I had opened 

 one, C. another). Did this bird come from another nest, 

 or did it belong to an earlier brood .? Eggs white, with 

 black spots here and there all over, dim at great end. 



May 4, 1856. See a peetweet on Dove Kbck,^ which 

 just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare 

 the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and 

 skimming away from me. 



July 6, 1856. In A. Hosmer's ice-bared meadow south 

 of Turnpike, hear the distressed or anxious jieet of a 

 peetweet, and see it hovering over its young, half grown, 



^ [Channing' had taken two of them.] 



^ [Jacob Farmer, of Concord, a farmer by occupation and an observer 

 of wild creatures.] ^ [In the Assabet.] 



