AMONG THE BIRDS OF THE YOSEMITE 223 



and wheatfields, and is a hundred times more 

 numerous than the mountain quail. It is a 

 beautiful bird, about the size of the Bob White, 

 and has a handsome crest of four or five feathers 

 an inch long, recurved, standing nearly erect at 

 times or drooping forward. The loud calls of 

 these quails in the spring — Pe-check-ah, Pe- 

 check-a, Hoy, Hoy — are heard far and near over 

 all the lowlands. They have vastly increased 

 in numbers since the settlement of the country, 

 notwithstanding the immense numbers killed 

 every season by boys and pot-hunters as well as 

 the regular leggined sportsmen from the towns ; 

 for man's destructive action is more than coun- 

 terbalanced by increased supply of food from 

 cultivation, and by the destruction of their ene- 

 mies — coyotes, skunks, foxes, hawks, owls, etc. 

 — which not only kill the old birds, but plunder 

 their nests. Where coyotes and skunks abound, 

 scarce one pair in a hundred is successful in 

 raising a brood. So well aware are these birds 

 of the protection afforded by man, even now 

 that the number of their wild enemies has been 

 greatly diminished, that they prefer to nest near 

 houses, notwithstanding they are so shy. Four 

 or five pairs rear their young around our cottage 

 every spring. One year a pair nested in a straw 

 pile within four or five feet of the stable door, 

 and did not leave the eg-ors when the men led the 

 horses back and forth within a foot or two. For 



