The Way of the Wild (Hawkes)/Ruff
The old drumming log near which Ruff was hatched was down in the pasture behind the old farmhouse where I lived as a boy. It was about half a mile from the house, but on clear spring mornings when the wind was right I often heard the old cock partridge drumming. The sound that this wary bird makes is so loud that one can hear it a long ways off.
I presume my young reader may not know what it is that the cock partridge does when he drums, so I will tell him. Perhaps he has thought that he had a real drum on which he whacked, but that is not the case. In the early spring at mating time the cock partridge finds an old fallen log, one that is clear from brush and moss, and he calls this his own particular drumming log, and woe to any other cock partridge who might try to drum on it.
Ruff's father first began drumming about the middle of April. This was to call a mate. When the lady partridge hears a cock drumming she knows that he is calling in partridge language for her to come to him and be his mate.
The cock partridge often has to drum for several days before he gets his mate, for the lady partridges are coquettish and have to be wooed just like the rest of the sex. When the cock partridge drums he stands erect on his log, swells his breast out to its full capacity and with his strong wings beats a loud tattoo on his breast and sides. At first his wings strike slowly, but finally he beats so fast that you could not see the wings, just a great mass of flying feathers. At last the lady partridge comes at his call and he jumps down from his log and runs to greet her. Then they are very friendly for several days, looking about for a good place for the nest and courting. They usually find a spot under a fallen tree top and Mrs. Partridge lays about a dozen eggs. When the eggs are all laid she begins sitting. The eggs will hatch within two or three weeks. When they are finally hatched it is a very lively brood of chicks which she presents to the old cock partridge. The same day that they are hatched they leave the nest, and run about, and begin feeding on plant lice which are so small one can hardly see them. These will be very well for several weeks, but they finally graduate from plant lice and go to eating grubs. When a partridge chick is two weeks old it looks for all the world like a brown leghorn chick of the same age. I have often seen the old partridge and her chicks in the woods. They are very hard to catch. I have several times caught them, but it was only after a long chase. When these chicks are young, through the day they will follow their mother about picking plant lice, but each night the wise old bird finds a safe place under a log, or some thick brush and broods them under her wings just as a hen will her chickens.
There are many dangers in the great woods, so the mother bird has to sleep with one eye open, as they say. The fox may come prowl-d ing about. He would gobble up the whole brood, mother and all, if he could find them. The raccoon is just as bad, only he is more clumsy and easier to avoid. Then hawks and owls are on the lookout for partridges, but they will be more apt to get them when they are larger and roost in the trees at night.
When the chicks are small, there are often very heavy rains, and if the mother is brooding them in a low place sometimes they are drowned, or they get chilled, and die. A little later on they are liable to have grubs in the head, and these are also fatal. Sometimes in July they will all become very stupid and will stand about and not care to eat. Then their mother knows they need medicine and she will lead them away to some very bad tasting berries and make them eat a lot of them. After this they feel better.
When Ruff's brothers and sisters were half grown I used to see them in the blackberry bushes along the edge of the woods. There had been twelve eggs and all hatched, but by this time there were but nine in the brood. The rains had killed two, and one had died from ticks. In October I saw them again in the beech woods, where I had gone for nuts. The partridges had also gone there for nuts and they had grown considerably since I saw them in the blackberry bushes. They were now nearly as large as their mother. When they flew one after another they made a great noise with their whirring wings.
In November the partridges all act very strangely, and this is called the mad moon for the partridges. Then it is that the brood breaks up and each partridge goes his own way. Partridges will often fly close to the houses during the mad moon. It was during the mad moon that I caught Ruff in my hands. This was a very remarkable thing, as the partridge is the shyest of birds. I was on my way to school and I found him lying on the ground under a telephone wire. He was not dead but stunned. He had been flying about in the foolish way that partridges have when the mad moon is on and had not noticed the wire. Bang he went into it and fell to the ground. I came along just in time to pick him up. I took him home and put him in an old chicken coop after nailing wire netting over the front of it so he could not get out.
He was very wild and shy. We kept him for nearly a month, but I do not think he would ever have been tamed. He would finally eat his corn or oats when no one was looking. When we came to see him he would go in the farthest corner of his coop and crouch down as though scared to death. My father said we could not tame him and we finally decided to let him go. The whole family came out to see him off. After some difficulty I caught him and took him struggling to the back yard. Here I set him down on the snow. For a few seconds he crouched as though uncertain. Then he ran a few steps to get a good start and with a roar of wings he was off. The last I saw of him he was sailing away toward the spruce woods and the old drumming log.
I do not know what became of him. If he escaped the owls, the hawks, the wildcat and the hunters, perhaps he reared his own brood of
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chicks the next spring. But one thing was certain, we never saw him again. He had gone hack to the wild where he belonged. Some of the wild creatures can he tamed, but the partridge usually remains wild all his days, so the great woods is the place for him.