FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



There came the Quail to brood. I wonder why. Did she 

 like company? Did she prefer to keep house where she could 

 hear sounds and see people? Had she lingered around the place 

 until she had lost all fear of it and hoped in the noise and prox- 

 imity to humanity to find protection from her natural enemies, the 

 snake, boy, squirrel and Owl? 



Bob never knew the bird was there until Gypsy made a point 

 at her, then she was brooding on seventeen eggs. The nest was 

 constructed on the ground. The builder had slipped through 

 the long hair-like grasses until she found a slight depression shel- 

 tered by a small spray of wild grape-vine. There she sat down 

 and turned around until she worked out a flat bowl-shaped place, 

 from which she picked away the blades of green grass, using the 

 dead ones for lining. The taller grasses closed over her while the 

 grape-vine screened her from the sight of the man, but not from 

 the scent of the dog. 



Her nest was beautiful. I like to think she built it there 

 because she had placed herself under Bob's protection. This 

 idea of shy wood-things creeping to him, because they knew 

 he was their friend and champion, makes me proud that he is my 

 friend also. Those seventeen eggs were freshly laid, bluish white 

 and sharply pointed at one end. The picture they made was a 

 novelty on account of their number. 



After we had secured a fair study of the nest we waited for 

 the young. We knew our ornithology well enough to be aware 

 that there was small hope of reproducing them, for a Quail lays 

 all her eggs before she begins to brood, so that the young emerge 

 at once and travel before their down is quite dry. While we 

 waited for these nestlings I had rare luck in securing two good 

 studies of grown Quail in the Limberlost, so I did not bother these 

 old ones. 



We did not know how many of the twenty-three days of 



330 



