264 HASTY OBSERVATION 



One day, in my walk in the woods, I dis- 

 turbed a whippoorwill where she sat upon her 

 eggs on the ground. When I returned to the 

 spot some hours afterward, and tried to make 

 out the bird upon her nest, my eye was baffled 

 for some moments, so successful was she in pre- 

 tending to be only a mottled stick or piece of 

 fallen bark. 



Only the most practiced eye can detect the 

 partridge (ruffled grouse) when she sits or 

 stands in full view upon the ground in the 

 woods. How well she plays her part, rarely 

 moving, till she suddenly bursts up before you, 

 and is gone in a twinkling! How well her 

 young are disciplined always to take their cue 

 from her ! Not one will stir till she gives the 

 signal. 



One day in my walk, as I paused on the side 

 of a steep hill in the edge of the woods, my 

 eye chanced to fall upon a partridge, sitting 

 upon the leaves beside a stump scarcely three 

 paces from me. *'Can she have a nest there? " 

 was my first thought. Then I remembered it 

 was late in the summer, and she certainly could 

 not be incubating. Then why is she sitting 

 there in that exposed manner'? 



Keeping my eye upon her, I took a step for- 

 ward, when, quick as a flash, she sprang into 

 the air and went humming away. At the same 

 moment, all about me, almost from under my 

 feet, her nearly grown young sprang up and 

 went booming through the woods after her. 

 Not one of them had moved or showed fear till 

 their mother gave the word. 



