Excerpt from Little Nature Studies for Little People, Vol. 2: From the Essays of John Burroughs<br><br>AN interesting incident to me the past season was seeing, on two occasions, a partridge sitting upon her nest in the woods. It was an incident which one does not witness every season.<br><br>One of the partridges had come up out of the dense woods and nested near a path on the edge of a large cemetery. A bevy of schoolgirls, after wild flowers in May, first discovered her. Their skirts almost brushed her before she stirred. Her nest was at the foot of an oak a few yards from the open ground. She could command the approaches in all directions, and fly whichever way she chose.<br><br>My friend and I approached to within a few yards of her, and stood and regarded her to our heart's content. Her color so blended her with surrounding objects that she was quite invisible. On such occasions the bird is as motionless as a stone, till she springs from her nest and is off on booming wing.<br><br>We did not disturb her this time, but withdrew as gently as we had approached. The brood was soon out and off, and I hope prosperous.<br><br>The other partridge was Sitting upon her nest in the woods near an Old road but little used. As it was late in June, it was probably her second attempt at rearing a family. This is the more probable as She was sitting upon only five eggs, when from twelve to fifteen are the usual number. Indeed, it may have been her third attempt.<br><br>Under the guidance of Martin, a boy who lived near by, we approached and observed her from the road a few paces away. Martin had a task to pilot our eyes to the exact Spot. One had to pass his eyes over the ground as he passes his hand over a table in the dark to find a pin.<br><br>She, too, was at the foot of a tree, but the red leaves and the gray bark and the brown fragments of wood were all copied in her plumage.<br><br>Presently we made her out, and then we wondered we had not seen her before. After some moments we took a few steps toward her, when she went humming away. As she left the nest, she fanned the dry leaves so with her wings that several of them sprang up and settled upon the eggs, quite covering them.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.