Wf/ft 
<3 
A "mad" 
Partridge 
jple.ce, alighting on a sheet of ice, bobbing its head up 
and down as it stood watching him. When I imitated the cry 
of a Killdeer, he said, 11 That’was the bird." William 
Emerson saw a Grebe this morning over Red Bridge ^ 
Edward 1. Emerson told me this afternoon that on 
the morning of March 27th, as he was dressing, he heard a 
sound which he took to be the violent slamming of a door 
in the next room. On entering this room, a bed-chamber in 
the second story at the north-east end of the house, he 
noticed a tuft of feathers clinging to the glass of one of 
the east windows and the next instant he perceived a 
Partridge standing on the roof of the piazza, within a few 
feet of the windows. The bird saw him almost immediately 
and flew swiftly off towards the Assabet. The snow on the 
roof was marked all over with its foot-prints. A few 
feathers attached to a bit of thin skin which had dried on 
the glass were shown me as proof of this interesting story. 
The day was bright and the sun an hour or more high at the 
time. If this was a case of "Partridge madness" it is the 
first instance which, so far as I am aware, has ever been 
noted in spring . Partridges were seen before and after the 
above date feeding in some apple-trees on the opposite side 
of the wood. They came, of course, from the woods across 
the Assabet. 
9 
