and fed until they learn to forage for them- 

 selves, then scattering, each going its separate 

 way. And so most nestlings do. But there are 

 exceptions. In some bird families the young 

 grow up together, leaving neither parents nor 

 home neighborhood until they mate and build 

 homes of their own. Every covey of quails is 

 such a family ; so, too, I think, is every flock 

 of chickadees. E^ery wedge of wild geese is 

 either a family or a small neighborhood of fami- 

 lies on a journey. 



One dare not let his fancy free with the 

 thought of such family life. It is too danger- 

 ously beautiful. What intimacies, what brother- 

 love and mother -love, what human home scenes, 

 could one not imagine? Not wholly imagine, 

 either. More than one tender passage I have 

 actually seen and heard. 



And so have hundreds of observers, doubtless. 

 For who has not listened to a mother quail call- 

 ing her hunted family together when the snow 

 and the night were falling? It is most sweetly, 

 tenderly human— the little mother, standing 

 upon the fence or in the snow of the silent 

 flelds, calling softly through the storm until the 

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