WISCONSIN BIRD-STUDY BULLETIN. 15 



BOB WHITE, QUAIL. 



Resident in Central and Southern Wisconsin; length ten inches, 

 sexes much alike; ivhite of male replaced hy buff on the female; nest 

 on the ground, made of grasses, twigs, weeds and leaves; eggs ten to 

 twenty-five, usually ten to eighteen. 



Bob White! Old- Bob— White! There he is, just 



beyond the fence on that stump ! How fine hei looks ! There he gees 



again. Bob AVhite! What a clear ringing whistle! I wonder if 



we can call him nearer. With my fingers,, I imitate his alto notes 



Bob White! and he whistles back, Bob White! I try again, 



he answers again. We whistle back and forth for several minutes. 

 Now he disappears from the stump ; we wait patiently, partly hidden 

 by some roadside bushes; now and then we catch glimpses of his head 

 bobbing forward and back through the grass. Again we whistle, 



— Old Bob White! comes the answer, not far away. There 



he is ! on the fence, on the middle rail, see him ? what a beauty ! Here 

 he comes, now he is on the ground: how white his throat is, and the 

 line above the eye: how tidy he is, and how well his browns and 

 grays blend with the old leaves and stuff about him ! 



Ah! that automobile is going to scare him. Away he sails into the 

 thicket beyond the brook. Very likely his home is there, and Mrs. 

 White is busy with hpr nest full of eggs, for it is the first week m 

 June. Twenty-four days will pass before the chicks appear. Then 

 both old birds will hunt with them through the stubble for eighteen 

 or twenty days when they will be left to the care of Mr. White and 

 Madame will arrange for the second brood. In the fall the whoJe 

 family will hunt together through the fields. 



Formerly the quail was very com.raon in Wisconsin, later they were 

 nearly all destroyed.* Between 1890 and 1902 many birds were im- 

 ported into the state from Kansas and other places and set free. 

 These and the remaining native birds having been protected by a con- 

 tinuous closed season have greatly increased in numbers in part's of 

 the state. The present game law prohibits the killing of quail before 

 October, 1910. It is hoped that by that time they will have become 

 common again. 



In some places they come about the gardens and farm buildings. 

 They even mingle with the chickens and are fed with them. In the 

 fall of 1902 a farmer near Baraboo found a small covey in his garden. 

 They were fed and coaxed off to the barnyard where they took up 

 their winter quarters in a cornstalk shelter built for them by the 

 farmer and his son. They were fed through the winter, often with 

 the fowls, became quite tame and have returned to the shelter for tht 

 past two winters. The covey, meantime, has increased to a large flock. 



^Tlie Birds of Wisconsin, L. Kumlien and N. HoUister. Bulletin 

 of the Wisconsin Natural History Society, 1903. 



