BIRD NOTES. 83 
over her, and thus secured the whole queer family. I took 
them home, and on the following morning made the studies from 
which the accompanying pen-drawing was perfected. The moth- 
er-bird seemed to be oblivious to all but her two hungry babes, 
brooding them and uttering a low hoarse croak, to which they 
always responded. The young became very tame, and manifest- 
ed a degree of hunger entirely consistent with their cavernous 
resources, pursuing my finger with open mouths whose capacity 
seemed to reach the core of their being. From whichever side 
I approached, these two comical little creatures came for me pre- 
cipitately, with pleading, upraised wings and gaping mouths. 
In the so-called “drumming” of the ruffed grouse, that soft 
murmurous tattoo by which his ardent lordship musters his little 
company of willing captives, we have another familiar sound as 
yet as much wrapped in mystery as the “boom” of the nighthawk. 
How felicitously Trowbridge revives this exciting reminiscence of 
the woods: 
“The partridge beats his throbbing drum.” 
But he leaves us to surmise the nature of that “drum” which 
has so long puzzled the world. Wilson, though a professional 
natural observer, from whom a more specific account might have 
been expected, is equally non-committal. “The bird strikes with 
stiffened wings in short, quick strokes,” he says, with perfect safe- 
ty. Elliot is equally guarded in his observation that the drum- 
mer “beats swiftly downward.” Burroughs, however, is more to 
the point, and assures us that the bird strikes “its own proud 
breast,” which tallies with the authority of Audubon, who dis- 
covered that the wings “beat the sides of the bird.” Bryant is 
of the same opinion; so is Peabody, and a host of others, though 
Burroughs, I believe, later changed his view. 
Earlier naturalists, too numerous to recount, however, have 
definitely located this mysterious drum, the hollow “drumming- 
log” having long been considered a necessary adjunct to this 
muffled roll. Such has been the most commonly accepted theory, 
seemingly abetted by the bird itself, from its singular preference 
