BOB WHITE.
Somewhat related to the grouse is the Quail, as he is called in the Northern States, or “Bob White,” his universally recognized appellation. His scientific name is Ortyx Virginianus. Differing from the Old World partridges, he has been assigned a place in the sub-family Odontophorinæ, of which five genera are said to exist, most of them being restricted to the extreme south-west of our country. His habits and history are full of interest to everybody.
Quails are restless, uneasy birds, attached to one place while rearing their family, but immediately upon the brood becoming able to travel, commencing their wanderings. There is no accounting for these movements, which sometimes deprive a whole district of their presence for a time, to populate a neighboring region previously without them. When such journeys are undertaken, a large number of birds participate, travelling on foot, and passing steadily through districts where food is plentiful, and seemingly without any definite destination in mind, so loath are they to use their wings, that in attempting to cross wide rivers and inlets immense numbers are said to perish. A limited and partial migration, it is highly probable, takes place annually from the more northern to warmer latitudes, influenced in its extent by the comparative severity of the seasons, being more distinctly migrating west than east of the Delaware River.
About the middle of March the winter flocks break up, and the mating begins. Although not indulging in the noisy and seemingly meaningless antics of the grouse to call attention to his personal attractiveness, Bob White, it would appear, becomes suddenly conscious of his comely looks and excellent voice. In a dignified manner, with head erect, he walks proudly about, inviting the opposite sex to view him at his best. From the orchard gate he calls a saucy good morning to the farmer, knowing that the law holds its ægis over him at this time, but he keeps an eye to hawks, cats and other predatory animals that respect neither time, place nor season. He is polygamous, willing to assume any amount of family responsibility, and will help to rear two, or even three, broods a year, a successful pair often turning out twenty-five young in a season. It is not an uncommon occurrence to find a covey of little cheepers, scarcely able to fly, as late as November.
Although paired so early, the Quails do not proceed to the business of nidification in the central part of their range until about the middle of May. The leeward side of some dense tussock of grass, a mouldering stump in a wild, matted meadow, the woody margin of a clover field or orchard, or an old pasture overgrown with bramble thickets, are situations commonly chosen, the female, as is her undoubted right, taking the lead in fixing upon the site. An artificial bed of grasses and vegetable trash, filling a shallow depression, is the nest. Sometimes it is placed so as to be concealed by overarching grasses, through which a regular tunnel, several feet in length, conducts to the sanctum; and, at other times, is only covered with leaves and straw, which the birds themselves have rudely adjusted. The nest, which is constructed solely by the females of the family, varies in dimensions according to the number of this sex that anticipate using it, the male in the meantime going about in quest of food, or sitting upon a low twig close by, cheering his wives by his trisyllabic note, and very faithfully warning them of the imminence of danger.
The work is prosecuted with considerable zeal, three days at farthest sufficing to make the nest ready for the first egg, which is immediately laid, and which is followed by one on each consecutive day, until seven or eight have been deposited. As many as thirty eggs are sometimes found in a single nest, which is due to the polygamy of the male. Two, and often three and four females, are taken by a male, and two have been known to occupy simultaneously the same nest.
When a pair of birds has established itself in a locality from the first, and has been successful in rearing a family of young during the ensuing spring, if the females are in the majority the unprovided ones still continue, as a general thing, to linger with the parents after their more specially favored companions have mated and moved elsewhere. This is particularly noticeable in a new locality where the covey consists entirely of members of a single family. In cases where several families congregate in the fall, the chances are greatly in favor of monogamy. Small flocks are more decidedly polygamous than larger ones. We have never observed the converse—that is, more than one male to a female—but where several pairs are found in the same field, at slight distances from each other, there is sometimes a noticeable tendency to associate.
The eggs of the Quail are crystal white, sometimes slightly tinged with yellow, and pyriform in shape. Eighteen days are required for their hatching. Where the father is not fortunate enough to possess a harem, a part of the work devolves upon him, while the mother seeks food and recreation; but where there are several females, the work is divided very amicably among them, each sitting about half a day at a stretch, then calling her relief with a low note, if there be only two, the male taking no part in the labor of incubation whatever. Should the family be larger, two females will sit side by side on the eggs, there being too many in number for one breast to cover. Meanwhile the husband remains close by, chirping encouragement in a low tone, and betimes making the field vocal with his loud, clear whistle. He is exceedingly vigilant, and if a human being approaches the nest gives the alarm to his partners, who secretly withdraw from the nest, while he, thoughtful husband as he is, flings himself upon the ground in front of the intruder, feigning lameness or injury, and seeking by every device known to him to attract attention and pursuit, till having beguiled the enemy far away from his home he seeks safety for himself in flight. The experienced oölogist pays no regard to this deceit, seeing in it only a sign of the nearness of the coveted prize, but patiently continues his search until he has discovered its whereabouts.
HOME OF BOB WHITE.
Two Wives on Same Nest.
Two broods are invariably raised and often a third, but the last appearing late in the summer, and scarcely attaining their growth before the coming of snow. If unmolested, it is evident, therefore, that the species would increase with great rapidity, as shown by the celerity with which regions, where the birds had been well nigh exterminated, have been replenished when a period of quiet for a season or two has been allowed them. The young run about in a very lively manner as soon as they have left the shell, and in a few days are given over to the care of the father, whom they follow and obey as readily as they did the mother, possibly because they do not recognize the change of guardians, while she returns to the cares of rearing another family.
During the spring and early summer both old and young find an abundance of food for themselves in the larvæ of various insects, the succulent shoots of growing plants and such seeds as abound. Later on, strawberries, blueberries, huckleberries and other wild fruits supply their demands. In August they grow fat upon grasshoppers, and as this is the time when seeds ripen, acorns and beech-nuts fall, and the stubble-fields are full of scattered wheat, rye, barley and maize, and insects are plentiful upon the ground, they feast themselves to satiety before the winter begins, until they have reached that delectable plumpness so highly esteemed by bon vivants. Attaining their full growth by the end of September, at least in the case of the earlier broods, the season of play for the partridges and sport for the gunner has come. Quail-shooting is regarded as a test of marksmanship in the United States. So rare and wild have the birds become by reason of incessant hunting, that it certainly requires skill and fine shooting to make a bag. Bred in the open fields, and feeding early in the morning and late in the evening, a man may beat a field all day, and put up only one or two birds, when he is certain that twice as many lay concealed, huddled up in little knots in out-of-the-way places, which the best of dogs might easily pass without discovering. Their inconspicuous colors, too, which are in keeping with the objects around them, so conceal them from the vision of the hunter, that, trusting to them, they will sit immovable until he has gone some distance beyond, when they will spring up and away like so many arrows, requiring a quick eye and a steady hand to turn and drop a brace.
When ultimately flushed, they fly to some particular covert, and so long as this thicket or fern-brake remains undiscovered, will repeatedly repair to it for safety and security. A rather curious circumstance, which has created no little discussion among American sportsmen, materially aids their concealment. When alighting, after being flushed, the Quail is said to give out no scent for some little time. This is supposed to be a voluntary act of retention of odor on the part of the bird, as a conscious method of protection. Some, while admitting the fact, believe it to be a power belonging to particular bevies, at least in a far greater degree than to others, like the custom of alighting upon the branches of trees when frightened, while others restrict the faculty to particular individuals rather than bevies. Our earlier ornithologists do not mention the retention of scent. It is probable, as claimed by a few, that Quails’ swift running over the dry leaves of upland woods or meadows allows little time and a poor surface for the transmission of the scent, and that when they drop suddenly and remain quiet no effluvium escapes, but which only becomes disseminated the very instant they move.
The open fields being smitten by the wild winds of November, and the reeds bruised and broken, the Quail retreats to the depths of the swamp or the shelter of a dense thicket, where he keeps life in him as best he can during the cold, stormy days, hunting the stubble and swamp for soft-shelled nuts and seeds, torpid beetles, and the hard fruits and seed-cases of grasses and weeds, some of which, the skunk cabbage for example, tainting his flesh with their flavor. Huddled together the forlorn covey allow the snow to cover them, trusting to shake it off on the return of the morning, but occasionally a crust freezes upon the surface, and the poor birds find themselves in a prison from which they cannot break out before they starve to death. The habit of huddling is peculiar to Quails the whole year round. They select at evening some spot of low ground, where the long grass affords shelter and warmth, and there they encamp, sleeping in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, with heads turned out, keeping each other warm, and ready to escape at a moment’s warning without stumbling over one another. A suitable roosting-place once found, night after night they repair thither, leaving it in the morning before sunrise to seek their breakfast.
Unless the winter be unusually mild, they may be seen associating in the pasture with the cattle, and even following them home to glean the grain that falls into the barnyard, and pick up the scraps that are thrown to the chickens. This delightful confidence is not always abused, for many persons take pains to foster the bevies they find spending the winter in some brushy hillside near the house by daily scattering grain or clover-seed upon the snow where the hungry birds may come and get it. The pert air with which one of the cocks will perch himself on a fence-rider or walk sedately along a stone wall in the early sunlight of a glistening January morning is reward enough to the benefactor, if he cares not to preserve them for the selfish pleasure of shooting them the following autumn.
As a delicate article of food the Quail is highly esteemed, and during the time the law allows the markets are filled with bunches of them. Various devices in the form of snares, nets and traps are called into service to effect their capture, and in some parts of the country, New England especially, fresh importations have been necessary to preserve a sufficient number for sport. Bands of beaters in the Southern and Western States cautiously drive immense flocks into nets, but there is less danger of exterminating this than almost any other species of game-bird, it would seem, on account of its sequestered habits and prolificacy.
Taming and domestication is an easy matter with these birds. In all cases, however, where the eggs have been hatched under a hen at liberty, the Quail chicks have run away to the woods as soon as the leaves have turned sear in the fall and never come back. They sang their “Ah, Bob White!” just as clearly before they had ever heard one of their kin as any woodland-bred Quails could do. It is quite common to re-colonize portions of the Eastern States when they have become depopulated, and an effort made some years ago to introduce these birds into the Salt Lake Valley of Utah was eminently successful. Within the past few years some of the West India Islands have been colonized, but attempts to acclimatize the birds in England and Ireland have proved most signal failures.