Only the cuckoo of our common birds builds so flimsy a nest as the dove's adored darling. I am sorry to tell you she is a slack, incompetent housekeeper, but evidently her lover is blind to every fault. What must the expert phoebe think of such a poorly made, untidy cradle, or that bustling, energetic housewife, Jenny Wren, or the tiniest of clever architects, the hummingbird? It is a wonder that the dove's two white eggs do not fall through the rickety, rimless, unlined lattice. How scarred and bruised the naked bodies of the twins must be by the sticks! Like pigeons, hummingbirds, flickers, and some other feathered parents, doves feed their fledglings by pumping partly digested food--"pigeon's milk"--from their own crops into theirs. When they leave the open woodlands to take a dust bath in the road, or to walk about and collect gravel for their interior grinding machines, or to get a drink of water before going to sleep, you may have a good look at them. [Illustration] A little screech owl in the sunlight where only a photographer could find him. [Illustration] Mrs. White on her nest while Bob whistles to her from the wild-strawberry patch. {237} As they walk, they bob their heads in a funny manner of their own. They are bluish, fawn-coloured birds about a foot long. The male has some exquisite metallic colours on his neck, otherwise he resembles his best beloved. Both wear black crescent patches on their cheeks. All the feathers on their long, pointed tails, except the two largest central ones, have a narrow, black band across the end and are tipped with white. The breast feathers shade from pinkish fawn to pale buff below. Beautiful birds these, in spite of their quiet, Quaker clothes. BOB-WHITE _Called Also: "Quail-on-Toast"; Partridge_ What a cheerful contrast is Bob White's clear, staccato whistle to the drawing coo of the amorous dove! Character is often expressed in a bird's voice as well as in ours. From their voices alone you might guess that the dove and the quail are no relation. They do not belong even to the same order, bob-white being a scratching bird and having the ruffed grouse and barnyard chicken for his kin. Pheasants and turkeys are distantly related. In the South people call him a partridge; in {238} New England it is the ruffed grouse that is known by that name; therefore, to save confusion, why not always give bob-white the name by which he calls himself? The chickadee, phoebe, peewee, towhee, whip-poor-will and bobolink, who tell their names less plainly than he, save every child who tries to know them much trouble. Don't you wish every bird would introduce himself? The boy who "Drives home the cows from the pasture, Up through the long, shady lane, Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat fields, That are yellow with ripening grain,"