RUFFED GROUSE; PARTRIDGE 103 



infer it was either the log or his body. Peabody says 

 he beats his body with his wings.* 



Dec. 14, 1855. Suddenly I heard the screwing mew 

 and then the whir of a partridge on or beneath an old 

 decaying apple tree which the pines had surrounded. 

 There were several such, and another partridge burst 

 away from one. They shoot off swift and steady, show- 

 ing their dark-edged tails, almost like a cannon-ball. 

 I saw one's track under an apple tree and where it had 

 pecked a frozen-thawed apple. 



Feb. 4, 1856. I see that the partridges feed quite 

 extensively on the sumach berries, e. g. at my old house.^ 

 They come to them after every snow, making fresh 

 tracks, and have now stripped many bushes quite bare. 



Feb. 8, 1856. E. Garfield says that he saw the other 

 day where a fox had caught in the snow three par- 

 tridges and eaten two. He himself last winter caught 

 two, on the hillside south of Fair Haven, with his hands. 

 They fleW before him and dived into the snow, which 

 was about a foot deep, going twice their length into it. 

 He thrust his hand in and caught them. Puffer said 

 that his companion one night speared a partridge on 

 the alders on the south side the pond. 



Feb. 11, 1856. Saw a partridge by the riverside, 



^ [It is now known that the ruffed grouse in drumming simply beats 

 the air with his wings, which do not strike his body or the log or each 

 other. In Bird-Lore for Nov.-Dec, 1908 (vol. x, pp. 246-249) Mr. E. J. 

 Sawyer describes the drumming and shows a photograph of a bird taken 

 in the act. The same magazine for March-April, 1909 (vol. xi, p. 77), 

 shows a photograph by Dr. C. F. Hodge of one of his tame grouse in 

 the act of drumming.] 



2 [His hut at Walden Pond.] 



