3bG 
and pull up liis corn, till the stalk becomes too strong for him. He watches the 
ripening of the first grain, and begins to gather before the reaper. He establishes 
himself in the stubbles with his brood, and scarcely leaves them till October. 
This is his favorite retreat, combining the choicest food and the most perfect 
cover ; and here the covey lingers till it ripens into full quailhood. In October, 
after the first frost, when autumn scatters everywhere a profusion of seeds and 
grains, the covey begins to wander and finds food everywhere. In the winter, 
corn' is the usual food, but the seeds of weeds, and even the acorn and beech-nut, 
are not rejected. From the time the shooting season commences, few or no in- 
sects are found in the craws of the killed. 
The meadow-lark is insectivorous and granivorous also, and though not stiictly 
a game bird like the quail, is yet quite eatable. In stubbles and well-grassed 
meadows, be lies tolerably well before the dog, and furnishes good practice for the 
young sportsman. He can be shot between the first of October and the first of 
February, without decreasing the number for the next year. Indeed, after the 
first of December, most of them have gone southward. 
The kill-deer, a species of plover, has also some merits as a game bird, and as 
it breeds here, deserves protection; but as it goes south in winter, if the same 
time is fixed, October and November would be the only months that it would suf- 
fer from the sportsman. 
There are several other varieties of plover occasionally seen in Ohio ; but it is 
believed they do not breed here, and as they are rarely met with, they scarcely 
need protection. 
The dove may, perhaps, be included among the game birds ; and as it breeds 
and winters with us, it should be protected for the same period as the quail. 
The yellow-hammer or flicker may also be included in the same list, and re- 
ceive the same protection, though its eatable qualities certainly do not rank very 
high. 
The woodcock ( Scolopax minor) is a choice game bird ; but it was strangely 
treated in the law of 1857, which forbade the killing before the 15th of Septem- 
ber. It breeds in vast numbers in the Slate, and especially in the wetter portions 
of the great flat extending from the counties of Brown and Clermont, on the Ohio 
River, to Lake Eiie and the Michigan line. In the swampy forests of this section 
it is abundant in breeding time, but not long afterwards. It arrives from the 
South about the first of March, pairs immediately, makes its nest upon the ground, 
hatches about April or May, and its young are generally two-thirds grown and 
fit for the table by the first of July. Few are killed on these grounds where 
they are produced in such numbers, as they subsist upon worms and insects ob- 
tained from a moist soil, and so soon as the summer sun dries up these vast flats 
