152 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



fifteen. They leave the nest at once and nimbly follow 

 the careful mother, as her chickens follow a domestic 

 hen. She leads them quietly through the woods, teach- 

 ing them the while how to live their lives and how to 

 keep themselves safe from their enemies. At her call 

 of alarm each chick sinks down on the ground and dis- 

 appears, looking like a leaf, a bit of stick or a pebble. 

 No one can recognize them as living things, and their 

 only danger is that some clumsy person may step on 

 one of them. Meantime the mother, with feathers erect 

 and trailing wings, is limping in front of the intruder, 

 falling down, pushing herself along on her breast, pant- 

 ing as if in the very agony of death, often "growling" 

 or "whining" in the effort to lure the enemy away from 

 the brood. Usually she succeeds. No dog, and few 

 boys and men, can resist the temptation to catch a 

 partridge. The pursuer runs forward and almost 

 grasps her, but his approach seems to give her a little 

 strength and she flutters feebly forward. A few steps 

 more and she will be his ; but still she evades him, and 

 presently, after having gone thirty or forty yards, she 

 rises on strong wing and, swift as a bullet, darts off 

 among the tree trunks. If the pursuer returns to the 

 place where he first saw her, sits down and remains 

 there quiet, after a time he will see her return on foot, 

 call together her little brood and start off again on her 

 travels. 



In Captain Bendire's admirable work, so often cited, 

 Manly Hardy, after describing the actions of the 

 mother bird, says : 



