In Berkshire fields . bt that accounts in large measure for the per-sistence of the breed. But even after they are wellgrown they must often stay by the parents, for onthe Crawford Bridle Path up Mount Washington,before it breaks out of the woods above timber-line, the partridges are extremely tame, and I haveapproached within six feet of a family of eight orten, led by a big cock. They went on feeding quiteundisturbed, scratching up the mossy soil with softlittle coots, like gentler domestic hens, and all fol-lowing behind the cock. There is nothing, to me, more fraught with charmand delightf
In Berkshire fields . bt that accounts in large measure for the per-sistence of the breed. But even after they are wellgrown they must often stay by the parents, for onthe Crawford Bridle Path up Mount Washington,before it breaks out of the woods above timber-line, the partridges are extremely tame, and I haveapproached within six feet of a family of eight orten, led by a big cock. They went on feeding quiteundisturbed, scratching up the mossy soil with softlittle coots, like gentler domestic hens, and all fol-lowing behind the cock. There is nothing, to me, more fraught with charmand delightful associations than a New Englandupland pasture, a pasture of irregular outline, withcapes of fir and birch jutting into it from the sur-rounding forest, with a mountain going up above POKING AROUND FOR BIRDS NESTS 145 and a long green valley dropping away below, per-haps to the distant white spire of the village church,with patches here and there of raspberry and blue-berry and huckleberry bushes, and cow-paths amid. The Blackbirds make lively, the air over the sedgy borders ofstreams and -ponds the fragrant sweet-fern, with thistle tops and steeple-bush to prick the field with pink, with the tinkle ofa distant cow-bell—and, as the sun is sinking in thewest, the fairy flutes of the white-throated sparrows!It is on the edges of such pastures that the white-throats (or Peabody birds) build their nests, from,the Adirondack and White Mountains think they infrequently nest farther south. In 146 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS the Berkshire Hills, at any rate, they are migrants,though I have two personal records of them here inmid-July, and have not attained their true songwhen they pass through. The books of bird songsalmost invariably give the white-throats melodysomething as follows: And that is the way he sings till he reaches the WhiteMountains. But there, at least, he invariably, inmy experience, adds two more intervals, his songbeing as follows: This song, with its clearly
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