CO': CORD 
1309 
March 28 
Hen 
Partridge 
" budding " 
in poplar 
Robins seem to have arrived in large numbers some 
time during to-day. When I got to Mr. Howe’s at 4.30 P. M., 
he told me there had been fully fifty feeding on his lawn 
only a few minutes before. As I walked back after sunset 
(6.10 - 8.30) I heard them singing and calling in every 
direction far and near. Two birds were in full song, the 
others had more or less wheezy voices as is common when they 
first come. I saw a number fly past, low down, as they 
crossed the road into our berry pasture where they seemed to 
be going to roost in the blueberry bushes.'] 
I was returning from Mr. Howe’s shortly after sunset 
this evening and had reached the Ritchie house when I 
lo .ked intently sJaead at the group of big-leafed poplars 
in the corner of our berry pasture just over the wall from 
the roadside, hoping vaguely that I might see a Partridge 
there. ure enough, there was one, easily to be mistaken at 
that distance for the Oriole or cater jillar nest that might 
have been but was not, there. I passed her within fifteen 
yards and kept on up the road to a distance of' sixty yards 
oefore stopping. All this while and for five minutes longer 
she remained rigid and motionless, her body rather erect, her 
neck stretched up and looking scarce thicker than one’s finger, 
her crest erect with its feathers widely parted. At length 
she abandoned her statuesque pose and, hopping up to a 
branch just above where she had been sitting, began budding. 
