UPLAND GAME BIRDS 117 



they blend in coloring with the shadows on the pine 

 needles under the leaves of the " misery " that although I 

 knew they were there, and dared not step for fear of 

 crushing them, I was not sharp enough to discover them. 

 No doubt a thorough search would have been successful, 

 but this a dread of injuring them forbade me to make. 



So picking up the one which had crouched motionless 

 beside a leaf and which was really not much larger than 

 my thumb, I contented myself with trying to solve the 

 mystery of how so much bird ever grew in that small 

 shell, half of which would scarcely cover his head. 

 Once fairly in my hand, he cuddled down perfectly con- 

 tented to let me fit the empty shell to his fat little body, 

 as if he knew he was out of that for good. He was a 

 funny little ball of fluffy down, with a dark stripe down 

 his back and a lesser one on each side of that. Mean- 

 while the adult bird had disappeared, and there was no 

 choice but to put the youngster back in the nest and go 

 on my way. But I had learned two things, — that affairs 

 move rapidly in the partridge household, and that hu- 

 man eyes are seldom a match for a bird's instinct. 



Most interesting of the many characteristics of tlie 

 Plumed Partridge is the habit of migration into the 

 valleys by the first of September each year, and back to 

 the elevations in the early spring. Scarcity of food does 

 not drive them to more fertile foraging grounds, for in 

 the spring they return while yet there is snow. Unlike 

 their relatives, these birds do not band together in large 

 flocks, and seldom more than two broods are to be found 

 in the same cover. Mr. Edwyn Sandys says : " The call 



