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Nov., ?9o3[ THE CONDOR ?47 After a few minutes of the closest inspection, he repeated the note "cuh" several times slowly in a low guttural tone, perhaps to tell his mates that the coast was clear. Nothing in his actions had appeared to me extraordinary, as I have fre- quently seen one lone quail perched in full view, when I have been hunting. Soon after he had uttered the low notes, I noticed several qnail coming out from the brush fence at different points near where the first one had, but the most noticeable thing about their advent was that they were perfectly fearless, slowly ?valking around picking up gravel or eating grass and clover leaves. Some were even fluffing out their feathers or scratching their heads with their claws, while two lazy ones rolled over on their sides and had a dust bath. None of them were alert and to see them there an observer would believe that hawks and men never existed to torment them. Gradually they kept on coming through the brush fence until I counted thirty-seven in the bunch. All this time the lone bird at S had remained intensely alert but silent; not even the rippling conversational notes of his mates (which sound st) much like the gurgling of a tiny stream in its rocky bed) had disconcerted him. With my glass I could see his brown eye roving everywhere, now up, now down, never appar- ently longing for the clover his mates were eating but always watchful. The con- trast between this lone bird so alert and his fellows close by, free and light-hearted, as if they were out on a vacation, was a puzzle to me. Slowly the bunch moved forward in the direction of the dotted line in the sketch, now widely separated only to gather closer together a little farther on, all the time with most of their plumed heads bent low among the clover roots, seeking their favorite dainties the clover seeds, while now and then a few would linger behind, taking a bath in the warm dust. Overhead a few fleecy clouds drifted lazily across the sky, and occasionally the lightest breeze shook ()tit the crimson tosslos of the budding oaks, or passed silently across the swirling waters of the ditch. All the world seemed at peace. Numerous insects droned in harmony from everywhere and the quail still moved along. When they reached the point C in the sketch, one of their number ran tothe point marked S and perched himself on the top of a large pile of brush at that point. This was done silently and without any note or call from the lone bird or from any of the feeding birds, only the low murmuring notes of the flock breaking the silence, as they slowly follo?ved along the course indicated by the dotted line in the sketch. After a few minutes the quail in the dead peach tree quietly joined his mates on the ground, while the bird on the brush pile remained alert and almost motionless. Probably a quarter of an hour had elapsed between the appearance of the first and second watchful birds at their post. At the point C the flock was only twenty-three feet from me by actual measurment, the ditch intervening between us. From this point they slowly worked up the hillside through a lot of tall dead weeds, close to the brush pile at S. Far off on the edge of the woods the resonant drumming oi a woodpecker came to me faintly, while the scream of a quarrelsome blue jay caused the lone quail to move his head quickly in that direction. About this point the birds curved their course back towards the brush fence and I began to wonder whether some other bird would repeat the previous pecu- liar actions, which by this time began to have an appearance of design and not mere chance, but no such thing occurred and the bunch moved forward quietly for some few minutes until they came to the point marked E in the sketch, where