BIRDS OF PREY Aes 
human visitor they will scramble into the hole and hide, 
leaving the adults to fool him by flying away. If, how- 
ever, only the adult birds are outside and there are eggs 
or young in the nest, the result is quite different. Their 
antics as they watch a person approaching from a dis- 
tance of, say, fifty yards, are comical enough. They 
straighten up and duck excitedly, exactly as a_ tiny 
chicken makes a show of his fighting powers, bending so 
low that the head nearly touches the ground. Then 
straightening up again, they turn their wise-looking 
heads slowly from side to side, as if to see the effect, 
and duck again. Finally one, presumably the male, 
decides to fly and the other pops into the burrow. It 
is of no use to try to coax or drive the mother out. She 
will seize and bite a stick thrust into the nest, but out 
she will not come, and the only way to see her is to dig 
for her. All about the door are heaps of cow or horse 
dung and wads of hair and bones, and I believe the same 
usually continues to the end of the burrow. It did in 
the only one I ever excavated. 
Incubation begins any time in March, April, or May, 
and lasts three weeks. Both parents assist, and _fre- 
quently both brood at the same time at the end of the 
burrow, which is from four to ten feet long. Usually, 
however, one acts as sentinel at the door. 
While the courtship of these queer birds lacks the 
srotesqueness of that of the sage grouse, it has some 
features no less amusing ; after watching a pair, you will 
conclude, as I did, that the sofa-pillow caricatures are 
not far from the truth. Sitting as close together as 
12 
