150 UPLAND SHOOTING. 



I Relieve that the number of birds reared in a brood 

 is overestimated by many, who place it as high as 

 eighteen or twenty. In the first place, the number of 

 eggs found in a nest will not justify this, if you 

 allow for the probable loss between the hatching and the 

 maturing of the broods; moreover, if you will go out 

 early in the season, when the coveys have not been 

 reduced in number, and flush a covey where you can watch 

 them closely, you will soon be able to satisfy yourself 

 that a dozen is a liberal estimate for an average covey, 

 and from this the two parents are to be deducted. 



There has been much discussion as to whether or not 

 a pair of birds rear more than one brood in a season. 

 Many believe and stoutly assert that they rear two, and 

 sometimes three. I doubt the correctness of this conclu- 

 sion except in rare and exceptional cases. If the nest is 

 destroyed, they will frequently lay again, but not other- 

 wise. Many base their opinion that a second brood is 

 reared upon the fact that birds of different sizes are found 

 in the same covey. We have all seen this, but I believe, 

 if we had watched closely, we would have generally found 

 at least three parent birds among them. Last season I 

 watched closely all coveys containing both large and 

 small birds in such cases I never shoot into them and 

 almost without exception I could see three or four birds 

 which I thought were a year or more older than the rest 

 of the covey. The fact that some birds are hatched early 

 in June, and others late in October, will not sustain the 

 supposition of those who believe that two broods are 

 reared by one pair. In hunting deer we frequently find 

 fawns well able to care for themselves early in July, and 

 again we find them small and helpless as late as Novem- 

 ber, and yet we know that it is a physical impossibility 

 for deer to breed twice in one summer. It is simply a 

 natural phenomenon which appears in all animate creation. 



