not call continuously. There is an interval, and the chicks sit still. She again calls, and they run on. Same again. Old bird keeps calling them at intervals, and each time they get farther away from the old place, stopping between the calls. I walk after them. When I get to them—some seven or eight paces off—both the old birds start up from the ground. One (the lighter-coloured one) spins along the ground as though injured, with her wings extended (as a Partridge in same case), but when I walk away flies to the old elder-stump, where she sits clucking—perhaps to call the chicks back again. I then walk some distance off, keeping the bird in view, and sit down on tree-stump watching her. It must now be 4 o'clock or past (have left watch at bush). Thinking it better to let the bird get easy in her mind, I walk away altogether, and when I return to the bush (at 4.25) neither old birds nor chicks are to be seen. It would seem that the birds had divined my presence early in the morning, and called off their chicks to a safer spot. This, however, is merely conjecture. No action on the part of either of the old birds previous to the calling off of the chicks suggested that they were suspicious of my presence, and the more I think of it the less I believe that they were. Following the chicks was a great mistake. Leave at a little past 5 a.m., neither old birds nor chicks having come back.
July 12th.—(Fine.) 8.25 p.m. Found the birds again.[1] They were some fifty yards from the original place. Put up both the old birds. One (the hen, I have no doubt) first spun along the ground, then flew about much disturbed, then settled on ground some little way off, and kept up a loud continuous clucking. One chick had already run out of the way. The other—the darker one—lay there, apparently not at all disturbed. After a time hen bird rose from ground, and flew about in great state of excitement, coming quite near me as I sat on the ground, and hovering about; then darting off again, then sitting on thistle-tuft, then again on the ground, always making the distressed kind of clucking note, which at times became shriller, rising, as it were, to an agony. The other bird—the male—also flew about near, behaving in the same way, but not so violently—a little less
- ↑ They had not returned to the old place, nor had I been able to find them during the interval.
