Bob Whites, Grouse, etc. 



against the side, every feather clings tightly with a tension pro- 

 duced by fear, in all probability, rather than by any voluntary 

 act ; but the result is that by flying upward, rather than running 

 and giving the scent to the dogs, and by compressing its feathers on 

 dropping to the ground again, brave little Bob White often gives 

 the sportsman a lively chase for his game. After much shooting, 

 birds become "educated." Wonderfully clever they are in match- 

 ing the sportsman's tricks with better ones. They school the wing 

 shots finely until the crack marksman confesses his chagrin. 

 The best trained dog may bushwhack an entire slope, where they 

 are known to be scattered, without flushing one ; for vainly does 

 the dog draw now. His usefulness was greatest in standing a 

 covey before the reports from the gun gave fair warning that no 

 one-sided sport had begun. 



Once the firing ceases, sweet minor scatter calls — quoi-hee, 

 quoi-hee — reunite the diminished members of a flock. A soli- 

 tary survivor has been known to wander about the country 

 through an entire winter, calling mournfully and almost inces- 

 santly for the missing brothers and sisters, until a farmer, whose 

 family had feasted on their delicate white flesh, unable to listen 

 to the cry that sounded to him like the voice of an accusing con- 

 science, again picked up his gun and put the mourner out of 

 misery. 



Among the thousands upon thousands of "quail" shot 

 annually, some sportsman finds either an albino or some other 

 freak wearing plumage that he is certain belongs to a distinct 

 species; but the Texan and the Florida birds alone are true, but 

 merely climatic, variations of our own Bob White. The former is 

 distinguished by its paler, more grayish tone of the upper parts, 

 that are marked with tawny, while the Florida bird has darker, 

 richer coloring, with heavier black markings, and a longer, jet 

 black bill. 



Several allied " quail" (partridges) are of too local a distribu- 

 tion on the Pacific slope and in the southwest to be included in a 

 book that avowedly excludes "local and rare birds." Wherever 

 the prolific Bob Whites have been introduced and protected in the 

 west, they have so quickly spread as to encourage the hope that 

 since true sportsmen everywhere are taking active measures to 

 stay the hand of bird butchers, our national game bird may some 

 day regain the vast numbers brutally destroyed. 



266 



