THE OOLOGIST 



195 



I picked this one up in my hand, it 

 making no move to get away, but 

 snuggled down quite content. After 

 holding and examining it as long as 

 I wished I again placed it on the 

 ground and my, did it not scamper 

 when it found itself free from all 

 cover of any kind. It remembered that 

 Mother had said hide and there it was 

 without cover. 



The Ruffed Grouse often nest in the 

 woods on my farm, sometimes I find 

 the nest in the older and larger growth 

 at the foot of some large tree, or un- 

 der some upturned root again in the 

 young but denser growth; a brush 

 pile is a favorite nesting place, the 

 nest being placed under the edge; 

 once I found a nest in the midst of a 

 blackberry bramble, and once, and 

 the most exposed nest I ever found 

 was on the top of a knoll in the open 

 pasture. 



Samuels, in Birds of New England, 

 reports receiving eggs from his col- 

 lectors in Northern Maine which they 

 declared to have been found in a 

 crow's nest in a high pine. He also 

 reports another occurrence of such 

 matter from Pennsylvania. The nest 

 is usually made of leaves, sometimes 

 a little grass enters into its com- 

 position and a few feathers from the 

 mother may be found in it. The cup 

 of the nest is not large nor deep; a 

 mere hollow. The egss vary in num- 

 ber, twelve might be called an average 

 set. A nest found May 8, 1892 con- 

 tained six eggs, others I have found 

 contained twelve, fourteen and fifteen. 

 A nest reported in the Ornithologist 

 and Oologist, July 1891 issue con- 

 tained twenty-one eggs, another found 

 at Franklin, N. Y. May 14, 1902 con- 

 tained a set of twenty of which seven- 

 teen hatched. (American Ornithology 

 Vol. II). The color of a set of eggs 

 of the Partridge now before me is a 

 light buff, one of which is noticeably 



lighter in color than others; over this 

 ground work there is sprinkled minute 

 spots or dots of light brown, at no 

 point thick and most obscure. They 

 measure 1.50 x 1.25 inches. The 

 Ruffed Grouse in spite of the increase 

 of latin names, which are added to it 

 every little while by the discovery of 

 a new subspecies by the Bird Doc- 

 tors has shown a very marked de- 

 crease in numbers in this locality and 

 in Maine. The decrease has been 

 most noticeable the last three years. 

 This decrease, in my opinion, has 

 been caused largely by cold, wet 

 weather at hatching time; the eggs 

 becoming chilled and from that reason 

 failed to hatch, or if they did hatch 

 the young became wet and chilled, 

 this causing them to die. There has 

 also been a gradual decrease each 

 year as the state became more thickly 

 settled; more land being cleared, 

 therefore less cover and more hunters. 

 This has been overcome to some ex- 

 tent by shorting of the open season 

 by law. The flesh of the Partridge 

 is most excellent to eat and is especial- 

 ly prescribed by physicians for in- 

 valids ; of all wild game there is none 

 better. All hunters of the Partridge 

 are familiar with the 'whir' with which 

 it rises from the ground on being 

 flushed, often causing the startled 

 novice to shoot wild; yet this bird 

 can and does fly swiftly and silently 

 as I have noted; wending its way 

 through the forest and thickets with- 

 out mishap. It has always been a 

 mystery to me how a bird which fly- 

 ing with the speed it does between 

 the trees of the forest without acci- 

 dent should so many times lose its 

 life by flying against the side of a 

 house or barn. I once saw such a mis- 

 hap occur to a Partridge. A number 

 of the boys who were attending a pre- 

 paratory school situated in this town, 

 were playing ball on the campus in 



