1898 
November 9 
♦ 
Partridge 
eating 
mushrooms 
Bron zed 
Gmackles 
(iliac. 
W 
Went to the Barrett Farm in the afternoon. A Partridge 
was drumming there at short, regular intervals on the stone 
wall in the Run. Either this bird or another "dusts" almost 
daily in an ant-hill near the wall. It is a common habit 
of the Partridge to resort to ant-hills for this purpose 
probably because they afford almost the only clear, dry dirt 
that can be found in the leaf-carpeted woods. Gilbert saw a 
Partridge eating a mushro om yesterday and brought in the 
fragment. It plainly showed the marks of the bird’s bill 
but unfortunately it was so mutilated that Miss Hosmer, to 
whom Miss Keyes took it for identification, was only able 
to say that it was one of the edible kinds. Miss Hosmer 
also said that she has seen Crows (as well as Cows) eating 
mushrooms and that they attack only the harmless species. 
(Another and better specimen afterwards obtained by Gilbert 
in the same place and considered both by him and by Miss 
Hosmer to be unquestionably the same species was identified 
by Miss Hosmer, "at a meeting in Boston", as Collybia 
maculata . an edible and"most delicious" kind of mushroom. 
Eate in the afternoon a flock of about 100 Bronzed 
Grackles, followed a minute or two later by a second flock 
of fully 300, passed over the Barrett House, flying South¬ 
west, The first flock was at an elevation of about 300 feet, 
the second at an immense height, fully one-half mile, I thought. 
