When first hatched the young follow the mother, and soon learn to comprehend her clucking call, as well as to act responsively thereto. Few mothers are more devoted to their children, and it is rare to find one more courageous and wily in their defence. Let the family be surprised by friend or foe, a single note of alarm is all that is necessary to cause the brood to scatter, and with the most clever adroitness to hide themselves beneath a bunch of leaves or grass. So successfully is the concealment accomplished, that a careful and protracted search is often necessary to discover their whereabouts. Often, when squatting by the roadside with her brood, the parent is taken unawares. This is the trial which she of all others seems to dread. To save her little ones she perils her own life by venturing upon an assault. Her first impulse is to fly at the face of the intruder, but sober thought comes to her rescue and teaches her the folly of such a course. She yields to the thought and the very next moment we find her tumbling over and over upon the ground, apparently in the deepest distress, but soon to recover her self-possession in time to carry out the final piece upon the programme, a _ruse_ in which lameness is imitated with wonderful ingenuity. While the mother is thus agitated, the birdlings are seen to scamper in every direction to places of shelter. Having accomplished her part, the happy mother now flies away, and by her well-known cluck soon gathers her brood together. The cry of the young is a simple _peet_, which is heard repeatedly during feeding, but only occasionally while nestling. Their food consists of the seeds of various plants and berries. While able to search for their own food, they derive, however, considerable assistance from the mother. Such cunning, wee creatures, when first they leave the egg, can only be compared with the young of the domestic hen. Dressed in a simple garb, they look but little like their parents. Above they show a reddish-brown or rufous coloring, which fades into a rusty-white below. Excepting a dusky streak which starts from the posterior part of the eye and crosses the auricular regions obliquely downward, and a whitish bill, they have nothing to diversify the monotony of their plumage. But when they have attained the age of four or five months, they show their heredity so plainly that their identity cannot be disputed or mistaken.