BIRDS OF PREY 177 



human visitor they will scramble into the hole and hide, 

 leaving the adults to fool him by flying away. If, how- 

 ever, only the adult birds are outside and there are eggs 

 or young in the nest, the result is quite different. Their 

 antics as they watch a person approaching from a dis- 

 tance of, say, fifty yards, are comical enough. They 

 straighten up and duck excitedly, exactly as a tiny 

 chicken makes a show of his fighting powers, bending so 

 low that the head nearly touches the ground. Then 

 straightening up again, they turn their wise-looking 

 heads slowly from side to side, as if to see the effect, 

 and duck again. Finally one, presumably the male, 

 decides to fly and the other pops into the burrow. It 

 is of no use to try to coax or drive the mother out. She 

 will seize and bite a stick thrust into the nest, but out 

 she will not come, and the only way to see her is to dig 

 for her. All about the door are heaps of cow or horse 

 dung and wads of hair and bones, and I believe the same 

 usually continues to the end of the burrow. It did in 

 the only one I ever excavated. 



Incubation begins any time in March, April, or May, 

 and lasts three weeks. Both parents assist, and fre- 

 quently both brood at the same time at the end of the 

 burrow, which is from four to ten feet long. Usually, 

 however, one acts as sentinel at the door. 



While the courtship of these queer birds lacks the 

 grotesqueness of that of the sage grouse, it has some 

 features no less amusing ; after watching a pair, you will 

 conclude, as I did, that the sofa-pillow caricatures are 

 not far from the truth. Sitting as close together as 



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