256 Bird -Lore 



A mere cavity is hollowed from the soil under a bush or fence, 

 Nest and Eggs or, if in the woods, under a decaying log. Sometimes the nest 



is made in a cotton row in the southern states. It is usually 

 well lined and concealed with grass or stubble. If in the field or by the roadside, 

 it is often placed within a thick tuft of grass, or under a shrub, being commonly 

 covered and open at one side, somewhat like the Oven-bird's nest. If situated 

 in the edge of the woods, it is made mainly of leaves, and the female, while 

 laying, covers the eggs with leaves when she leaves the nest. If the nest is dis- 

 rurbed by man or animals, she is likely to desert it; but Dr. Hatch found that 

 when he removed the covering carefully with forceps, and replaced it just as 

 he found it, the bird did not abandon its home. 



From eight to eighteen eggs are deposited, and nests have been found with 

 from thirty-two to thirty-seven eggs. These are probably the product of two 

 females. The eggs are a brilliant, glossy white, sharply pointed at one end. 

 They are packed closely in the nest with the points downward. There is evi- 

 dence that sometimes two broods are reared in a season, but usually the so- 

 called second brood is reared only when the first has been destroyed. 



The young are hatched after about twenty-four days' 

 The Young incubation, and no birds are more precocious. They usually 



remain in the nest until the plumage has dried, but most obser- 

 vers agree that they are able to run about at once. Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright 

 saw one of three young hatch from the egg, when all immediately left the 

 nest at the warning cry of the mother. 



The tiny little ones resemble somewhat a diminutive young brown Leg- 

 horn chicken. On the least alarm, they squat close to the ground, where the 

 eye can hardly detect them. The driver of my heavy farm team once saw a 

 mother Quail fluttering in the road before him, and stopped for fear of crush- 

 ing the young which were hiding in the road ; but the wheels of the farm wagon 

 had already killed two, which had steadfastly maintained their position in 

 the deep rut until the wheels had passed over them. 



This bird is an adept at concealment. A covey will squat 

 Self Protection on the ground and become practically invisible. Years ago in 



the South, I stood talking with a hunter, when my eye caught 

 a slight movement on the ground, and there sat an entire flock of Bob-whites 

 in a little circle, almost beneath my feet, and scarcely concealed by the scanty 

 shrubbery. As the eye found them, they burst up between us with an explo- 

 sive roar of wings like a "feathered bomb-shell," and went whirring away. 



Bob-white seldom migrates except for short distances when 

 Habits in search of food; but there is considerable evidence that, at 



times, migrations of some length toward the South take place 

 in the fall. This has never come within my observation, as all the coveys 

 that I have watched have remained throughout the year in the same locality, 

 unless exterminated bv a severe winter or bv the hunter. It is a well-known 



