FAMILY Tetraonidz. 
ashen gray. Nest, on the ground usually in grassy 
places; it will contain from ten to sixteen white eggs. 
The bird is a prolific breeder, and one may often find 
a nest with as many as fifteen eggsin it. It is also the 
case that the hen bird will successfully raise two large 
broods in one season. 
The Quail is generally not a migrant; it ranges south 
from southern Maine and New Hampshire to the Gulf of 
Mexico, and westward to eastern Minnesota. Itis nota 
characteristic woodland bird, and as a consequence is ill- 
fitted for the exposure of our hard northern winters. I 
know of no Quail whatever in central New Hampshire, 
save the few which have been broughi there, and there 
is no doubt but that most of these have perished. 
The Quail is by no means the least among the mem- 
bers of Nature’s orchestra. As his name implies, his 
song simply combines two tones admirably represented 
by the syllables, Bob... white! But one must whistle 
them, or do the difficult trick of whistling and saying 
the words simultaneously. Nor is this all, the word 
Bob should be rendered staccato—it must fairly bounce 
like a ball, so short must it be, and the white should bea 
long slurred tone extending all the way from Bob to the 
end of white, a range of at least five or six tones. To il- 
lustrate the song by the aid of the piano one should strike 
F (the third one above the middle C) quickly, as though 
the ivory were hot, and again the second time, jumping 
at once from it to D sharp. This is what a musician 
would call an augmented sixth, and that is what may be 
considered the nearest approximation to the range of 
the Quail’s voice. I sometimes think it is only a plain 
sixth (see song No. 2) without the extension (or augmen- 
tation) of the D to E flat,* and again at another time Iam 
sure I hear a full seventh. One can not lay down a rule 
about such a thing as that ; wild music must of necessity 
be more or less free from the restrictions of accurate pitch. 
Nor does the Quail always whistle F or make a jump as 
high as a sixth. Song No. 4 is what the bird gave me 
in the middle of May, 1900, m the Arnold Arboretum, 
*Properly written, the augmented D is D sharp; but D sharp 
and EF flat are identical. 
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