96 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



Feb. 18, 1852. I find the partridges among the fallen 

 pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour be- 

 fore sundown, ready to commence budding in the neigh- 

 boring orchard. 



April 22, 1852. Our dog sends off a partridge with 

 a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a 

 winged bullet. 



May 1, 1852. A partridge bursts away from under 

 the rock below me on quivering wings, like some moths 

 I have seen. 



June 27, 1852. I meet the partridge with her 

 brood in the woods, a perfect little hen. She spreads 

 her tail into a fan and beats the ground with her 

 wings fearlessly within a few feet of me, to attract 

 my attention while her young disperse; but they 

 keep up a faint, wiry kind of peep, which betrays 

 them, while she mews and squeaks as if giving them 

 directions. 



Oct. 15, 1852. The flight of a partridge, leaving her 

 lair (?) on the hillside only a few rods distant, with a 

 gentle whirring sound, is like the blowing of rocks at 

 a great distance. Perhaps it produces the same kind of 

 undulations in the air. 



April 6, 1853. Hear the faint, swelling, far-off beat 

 of a partridge. 



May 11, 1853. I hear the distant drumming of a 

 partridge. Its beat, however distant and low, falls still 

 with a remarkably forcible, almost painful, impulse on 

 the ear, like veritable little drumsticks on our tympa- 

 num, as if it were a throbbing or fluttering in our veins 

 or brows or the chambers of the ear, and belonging to 



