EASTERN BOB WHITE 13 



close sitter and usually does not leave the nest until almost trodden 

 upon. The favorite nesting sites seem to be along old fence rows, 

 where the grass grows long and thick or is mixed with tangles of 

 vines or briers, in neglected brushy corners of old fields, under dis- 

 carded piles of brush, or in the tangled underbrush that, mixed with 

 grass, grows on the edges of woods, thickets, or swamps. The nest 

 is often placed in open fields of tall grass, where the hay cutter some- 

 times destroys it, in cultivated fields of grain or alfalfa, or at the 

 base of a tree in the farmer's orchard, if the grass is long enough 

 to conceal it. A nest is often found in an unexpected place. Once, 

 at my cottage on Cape Cod, I worked for two days weeding my 

 garden within 3 feet of a boundary fence and was surprised the next 

 day, on cutting the grass along the fence, to uncover a quail's nest, 

 with 15 eggs, from which the bird had never stirred. I was told 

 one day that there was a quail's nest under a brush pile at our golf 

 club and went up to photograph it. I found a pile of pine boughs 

 that had been cast aside just off the edge of an elevated putting green. 

 I walked around it carefully several times trying to see the bird, 

 but I never found it until I lifted the right bough and flushed her. 

 I saw her several times afterwards and believe she raised her brood 

 successfully. 



George Finlay Simmons (1915) tells of a nest found by him in 

 Texas " under the edge of a bale of hay in an old shed on the prairie," 

 which he discovered by flushing the bird. Charles R. Stockard 

 (1905) writes from Mississippi: 



In fields of sedge grass or oats many pairs will often nest very close together. 

 June, 1895, I found in a thirty acre field of sedge grass sixteen nests of the Bob- 

 white, all containing large sets, ranging from twelve to twenty-two eggs, and the 

 total number of eggs in this field must have been about three hundred. 



Out of 602 nests, studied by Stoddard (1931) and his associates, 

 97 were in woodland, 336 in broom-sedge fields, 88 in fallow fields, 

 and " about 4 per cent in cultivated fields, mostly in the grassy growth 

 around stumps in corn or cotton fields, but occasionally under trash 

 cast aside by plows or cultivators." In the few cases where nest 

 construction was under observation the work was done entirely by 

 the male under the supervision of his mate. 



The construction of a typical nest is very simple. Having se- 

 lected a suitable spot, where the vegetation is thick enough to af- 

 ford effective concealment, a hollow is scooped out and lined with 

 dead grass or other convenient material; after that the dead and 

 growing grass or other vegetation is woven into an arch over the 

 nest, often completely concealing it, and leaving only a small open- 

 ing on the side, just large enough for the bird to enter or leave the 

 nest; while incubating, the bird looks out through this opening; if 

 there are any vines or briers growing about the nest, these are also 



