The tracks of partridges are more remarkable in this snow than usual, it is so light, being at the same time a foot deep.
In one place, when alighting, the primary quills, five of them, have marked the snow for a foot.
I see where many have dived into the snow, apparently last night, on the side of a shrub oak hollow. In four places they have passed quite underneath it for more than a foot; in one place, eighteen inches.
They appear to have dived or burrowed into it, then passed along a foot or more underneath and squatted there, perhaps, with their heads out, and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole
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| February 17, 2013 |
I scared one from its hole only half a rod in front of me now at 11 A.M.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1855
See. February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard"); February 12, 1855 (" I see at Warren’s Crossing where, last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out."); February 16, 1855 ("I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs . . .It is surprising what a quantity of this wood they swallow with their buds. What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
See. February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard"); February 12, 1855 (" I see at Warren’s Crossing where, last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out."); February 16, 1855 ("I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs . . .It is surprising what a quantity of this wood they swallow with their buds. What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
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