My Boyhood and Touth 



ing and gliding swiftly up again. These fine wild 

 gray birds, about the size of a pigeon, lay their 

 two eggs on bare ground without anything like 

 a nest or even a concealing bush or grass-tuft. 

 Nevertheless they are not easily seen, for they 

 are colored like the ground. While sitting on 

 their eggs, they depend so much upon not being 

 noticed that if you are walking rapidly ahead 

 they allow you to step within an inch or two 

 of them without flinching. But if they see by 

 your looks that you have discovered them, they 

 leave their eggs or young, and, like a good 

 many other birds, pretend that they are sorely 

 wounded, fluttering and rolling over on the 

 ground and gasping as if dying, to draw you 

 away. When pursued we were surprised to find 

 that just when we were on the point of over- 

 taking them they were always able to flutter 

 a few yards farther, until they had led us about 

 a quarter of a mile from the nest; then, sud- 

 denly getting well, they quietly flew home by 

 a roundabout way to their precious babies or 

 eggs, o'er a' the ills of life victorious, bad boys 

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