This Gull is sixteen inches in length, that is almost as big as a crow. The beak is not strong, the point is curved downwards; the head a beautiful dark-brown. This colour extends to the throat. There is a white ring round the eyes. Neck and mantle a beautiful ashen-grey, throat, breast and underparts white, with pinkish tinge; outer primaries dark with white stripes. The upper parts of the wings are light grey; beak and legs carmine, also the irides and their borders; the toes are joined together by a web. The head becomes white in winter, the beak and feet lose their brilliant red colour and become flesh colour, and then brownish. It nests with others in settlements consisting sometimes of 3000 to 4000 nests. The nest is placed on broken reeds, turf clods, tufts of rushes; the bird, without much skill, makes a little heap, scratches a hollow in it, smoothes the inside, prepares a litter of dry rush and sedge leaves, and the nest is finished. The nests are placed close together. The clutch consists of two or three eggs, very rarely four, usually of a yellowish clay colour, marked, or regularly speckled with a dark shade. [Illustration: USEFUL. THE QUAIL.] THE QUAIL. (_Cotúrnix commúnis._) The Quail is about the size of a large clenched fist, and is almost as round as a skittle ball. Its entire plumage is clay-coloured speckled with a darker shade, and marked with light lines, like the head of oats. The whole marking of it, especially of its back, is designed to avert man’s attention from this crouching bird. The throat of the cock is black, the beak and legs like those of the barn-door fowl. The bright eye light nut-brown. The nest is placed on the ground, and is simply a scratched-out hole, which is rather littered than lined with blades of grass. In this the female bird lays her eggs of olive yellow, beautifully speckled with brown, sometimes to the number of sixteen, but usually ten. The chicks run after their mother as soon as they are hatched and dried--which is a very pretty sight. They can make themselves invisible by crouching on the ground, so that the colour of their down assimilates with that of the earth. The habits of this bird are those of the domestic fowl. From early morning till evening twilight, the Quail is on its feet, searching the ground for grains of seed or little beetles. It scratches like a hen, and when it finds a sunny, dusty or sandy place, it bathes in the sand, flinging the dust all about. The Quail is a useful bird--for it picks up only the seed which lies on the ground, and feeds its young with the same. It therefore deserves shelter and care. Its voice and habits are pleasant and agreeable to man. Its familiar and homelike cry, sounds from out of the cornfields, and the little hen answers. The mating call of both is, “_Bue bee wee_.” “Ah! what sweet accents fall softly around, Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! (Fürchte Gott!) Murmurs the quaint little quail from the ground.”[1]