^ail and Partridge 131 



Young partridges look like brown downy 

 chickens seen through the small end of a 

 spyglass. They are hardly bigger than your 

 thumb, but can run fast before their down is 

 dry. They make the faintest little chittering 

 noises, and are wonderfully obedient. At their 

 mother's lightest note of warning, they vanish. 

 Like the young pheasants, they are helped by 

 their color. Indeed, this is true of all earth- 

 nesting birds. Their young can with diffi- 

 culty be distinguished from the ground. 



A brood of pheasants makes a bevy, a brood 

 of partridges (quail) a covey. The covey 

 feeds, and haunts, and plays together until the 

 next mating time. It also comes home to 

 roost — seldom sleeping more than a hundred 

 yards from the nest it was hatched in. The 

 roosting is upon the ground, huddled as close 

 as possible in a perfect ring, heads out, tails 

 in. Thus they guard against surprise, or the 

 back-seizure which is the fox's chosen method 

 of attack. They are very light sleepers, stir- 

 ring at the least noise, and uttering a little 

 shrill cry. At sound of it the covey scatters, 

 and lies snug after running perhaps fifty yards. 

 Nature has given them in protection power 

 to withhold their scent when thus frightened.^ 



1 The power of withholding scent is a mooted point ; 

 but experience in the hunting field convinces the writer 

 of its existence. 



