FOREST AND STREAM 
1147 
within me a strong desire to see the bird make 
the sound. I wanted to know how he did it. 
I could not leave my work then, but I kept the 
desire, and a few weeks later when at leisure 
one day I stole away alone into the woods. In 
the deepest part there was a small opening which 
I called “The Glade,” where no trees grew and 
where my father had established his “sugar- 
camp” in the days before the great forest-fire 
seriously checked maple-sugar making in that 
section. I approached the Glade with that al¬ 
most silent tread which a barefoot boy accustomed 
to the woods can assume, and, concealing myself 
behind a fallen tree, I watched, eagerly, in the 
hope that the partridge there on the ground be¬ 
fore me would drum. Soon I discovered that 
instead of being the old cock whose drumming I 
heard, it was a mother bird, and all around her 
were little fuzzy chicks. 
On she came, all unconscious of my presence. 
She would choose a spot close to tall grass which 
might form a convenient cover in a moment of 
danger, and would there scratch like a hen, ut¬ 
tering soft clucks when she backed away to 
allow the little chaps to gather up the food she 
uncovered. Always she kept raising her head 
and looking about for danger, and when she 
changed her scratching place she would scoot 
On day in October when the youngsters were 
as large as their mother I came across them at 
about the place where I had first seen them in 
the spring. The sound of a distant drum came 
from somewhere down in the swamp. The birds 
heard it, too, and then one of them mounted a 
log and after strutting about and spreading his 
tail-feathers he gently waved his wings in the 
air, hesitated and waved again. Soon he seemed 
to realize what he was trying to do, and then 
his wings began to move at an increasing rate 
until they produced a roar that was music to my 
ears as it was to his. He was drumming, and I 
was seeing him do it! 
After that the family remained together for 
some time but the young ones seemed more in¬ 
dependent of their mother. Late one afternoon 
when the weather was getting cold and there 
was the feel of snow in the air I found the flock 
on the edge of the woods. There were but 
three of them! This looked bad for the winter’s 
hunting, but suddenly I realized that I did not 
care. 'I have no quarrel with the legitimate 
sportsman, indeed I enjoy good sport myself; 
but I had lost, forever, my passion for useless 
destruction of bird life. 
While wondering what had become of the rest 
of the flock I noticed that the three remaining 
young ones showed signs of uneasihess, running 
about aimlessly, flying into the trees and down 
... 
H The Speed of Ducks || 
The Canvas Back can Make two Miles 1| 
1| a Minute But Only When Frightened 
By Edward T. Martin. 
= niiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiR E 
....... 
T ESTS have been made recently under direc¬ 
tion of the University of California to as¬ 
certain the speed with which common birds 
usually fly. 
It is generally admitted that the canvas back is 
the most rapid flyer of all birds of the air. This 
based on tests made early in the seventies when 
a gunner-author, to obtain accurate data for a 
book he had in preparation, spent much time in 
experimenting. He had a course of an even 
mile measured along a straight stretch of the 
Illinois River one winter when it was solidly 
frozen; then as soon as the spring ducks came, 
began his tests which were so thorough he could 
not finish his work that year but was obliged to 
complete it the next. From what I have been 
told no timing of horses on a race track was 
more accurate than his of the waterfowl. The 
most speedy mile of any was done by a flock of 
frightened canvas backs at which a volley had 
been fired to hasten them along. Their time for 
the measured mile was less than half a minute, 
better than 176 feet a second. This, however, 
doubled the time of a like lot of ducks flying 
naturally and facing a strong wind. Between 
across the open spaces between bunches of grass 
with her chicks gathered close about her. Once 
a hawk swept across the open, and at her warn¬ 
ing every chick disappeared as if by magic. For 
an hour or more I watched her, and not for an 
instant did she relax her keen vigilance nor 
did she cease working except when danger 
threatened. 
Thus opened for me an ever-widening view of 
things. By fall I had learned that partridges 
and quail are more than pieces of game; that 
they may be mothers or members of happy 
families; that, living, they are useful if only be¬ 
cause of the pleasure and profit to be derived 
from watching them at work and at play; that 
they are to be taken for food, of course, when 
needed, but not to be wantonly destroyed to 
gratify the lust of killing. All summer I fol¬ 
lowed the little family about. I located their 
principal haunts and learned how to find them 
without letting them find me when I went into 
the woods. For hours at a time I watched them, 
silent and entranced. Deerflies boomed about 
my head, gnats annoyed me, mosquitoes stabbed 
me cruelly; but what I saw amply repaid me 
for the sacrifice of physical comfort. I watched 
them in our sugar-bush, saw them among the 
great oaks in Hinds’ woods, followed them along 
the edge of Berger’s wheat field and by slow 
stages away down through the tamarack swamp 
and back across the Briggs’ farm to our woods. 
again without any evident purpose. Suddenly 
one arose and flew straight away across the fields 
until he was lost to view in the gathering shades 
of the night. The next day none but the mother 
remained. 
It is a fact, I think, that there comes a time 
in the life of birds of the grouse kind when 
they seem to go crazy and soon afterward fly 
straight away for many miles, sometimes return¬ 
ing, but generally not. I have heard observers 
of bird habits express disbelief in the occurrence 
of this crazy flight, and have heard others claim 
to have witnessed it. If the partridges I watched 
that evening many years ago were not, for the 
time being, stark crazy, they surely acted the 
part. 
Although I have known those who claim to 
have witnessed this phenomenon, I have never 
heard a satisfactory explanation of it. It is 
sometimes thought to be a partial survival of a 
former migratory habit. I cannot accept this 
hypothesis, for I know of nothing in natural 
history to justify the supposition that a species 
addicted to migration would abandon it. It 
seems to me probable that in the case of the 
home-dwelling partridge Nature has introduced 
this unique method of scattering the members 
of families so as to prevent inbreeding. This, I 
believe, is the explanation of “the mad flight of 
the partridge.” 
canvas backs and ducks of the other deep water 
variety, red head, blue bill, mergansers and such,, 
there is no considerable difference in velocity but 
puddle ducks, including teal and also geese, are 
from 20 to 30 miles an hour slower in extreme 
speed. The larger the bird the more slowly it 
seems to fly which is why a little greenwing teal 
has a name he does not deserve, that of being as 
swift of wing as either blue bill or canvas back. 
The experiments made by the university were 
very simple in their nature and, to my mind, 
lacking in completeness, for the reason that it 
was possible to consider only a slow food search¬ 
ing flight. The birds had no long distance to 
travel, were in no particular hurry to get where 
they were going and even wind was not figured 
on as increasing or diminishing their speed. 
The experiments were made from an auto¬ 
passing over a straight and level piece of road. 
If a bird showed desire to fly close by in the 
same direction the auto was going, the speed of 
the machine was regulated to correspond with 
that of the bird, then the speedometer was con¬ 
sulted to see how fast both car and bird were 
moving. The distance often was short, very 
short, only a small fraction of a mile, and at its 
best a speedometer can hardly be said to possess 
the accuracy of a stop watch, which is why, 
though interesting, the results—to me—are far 
from conclusive. 
(Continued on page 1148.) 
