FAMILY Trtraonfcto. 



<^ray. Nest, on the ground usually in grassy 

 pl:i<-i-s; it will contain from ton to sixteen white eg 



The bird ifl a prolific breeder, and one may oi't'-n find 

 a nest with as many as fifteen eggs in it. It is nUo flu- 

 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. It is not a 

 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 brought 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 be a 

 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 I am 

 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, in the Arnold Arboretum, 



Properly written, the augmented D is D sharp; but D sharp 

 and E flat are identical. 



