314 Bird -Lore 



will come back. But disturb the eggs ever so slightly — ^pick up an egg and put 

 it back as near as possible just as it was before — and the next time you go to 

 look at the nest the eggs are cold, the nest deserted, and possibly robbed by 

 some jay, snake, or four-footed creature. This is unfortunate, because Quail 

 often select places for their nests near houses or on cultivated lands. The 

 writer remembers one nest made under the edge of a one-horse treadmill 

 that was used every day to churn butter. The poor Quail was frightened 

 away several times each day, and of course stayed away when the horse was 

 doing the churning, but she laid something like eight eggs before becoming 

 sufificiently discouraged to leave. 



Very rarely one will find a Quail's nest in which the eggs are just hatching, 

 and the young have such an instinct for hiding at the least alarm that on such 

 an occasion they will actually run to cover with half of the egg- 

 Young shell still clinging to their backs! The tiny youngsters give a 

 little weak-voiced peep or two, and then all is quiet. They would 

 be stepped on and crushed before they would make their hiding-place known! 

 They run about in a most lively way by the time they are two or three days 

 old, and are often to be seen along the less-frequented roads in summer time. 

 Like chickens, the Quail love to scratch in the dust, and a dusty road,. with- 

 out too many passers-by, is a strong attraction for them. It is a pretty sight 

 to see the old ones leading the broods in such places, stopping to pick up seeds 

 here and there, with their head-plumes bobbing each time they give a peck 

 at a seed, wallowing in the dust now and again, but ever with a watchful eye 

 for danger; while the youngsters run hither and thither, now scattering a 

 little, then closing up again, at a warning from the old ones, covering the 

 dust with the tracks of their little feet, and gradually working their way along 

 the road for often a hundred yards or so before sufBciently disturbed to take 

 to cover. 



Each flock of Quail has its own special domain, and never wanders far 

 away; and in the summertime, before the birds are made wild by the opening 

 of the shooting-season, any one passing often over a road early 

 Haunts in the morning, or late in the afternoon, may see the same flock 



again and again, and watch the youngsters grow. While the Quail 

 scatter out in pairs in the nesting season, and keep their broods separate for 

 a little time when still very young, they soon commence to band together; 

 and where they are plentiful the bands become larger and larger as fall 

 approaches, until, in places, they number hundreds in a flock. But in the 

 more thickly settled country, where every man's and boy's hand is against 

 them, they are sadly diminishing, and one may find only a small band of ten 

 or twelve living near a spring where he used to see a hundred. 



While the California Quail is very wary in some ways, it often takes up 

 its abode in the vicinity of houses, and even in cities where there are gardens 

 with shrubbery. Unlike the eastern Quail — the Bobwhite, that is — which 



