The pull of the deck on these pleasant, warm evenings is irresistible. We eat outdoors often and linger long. When dishes are finish we wander back to the yard. Respiration deepens, pulses slow. During one such evening we heard a distant call echo up from the woods. It was not the peacocks down at the farm below us. The sound grew louder and more furtive until out burst a little quail in quite a state, calling and calling and rushing to and fro. The Audubon Society describes the call as haunting. (link here) It did indeed bewitch me enough to follow it around the house til the cries stopped. Once reunited they happily and quietly walked off.
They are favorites of mine, these timid little birds that flee to nearby bushes as soon as they are noticed.
The Quail's Nest
I wandered out one rainy day
And heard a bird with merry joys
Cry 'wet my foot' for half the way;
I stood and wondered at the noise,
When from my foot a bird did flee–
The rain flew bouncing from her breast
I wondered what the bird could be,
And almost trampled on her nest.
The nest was full of eggs and round–
I met a shepherd in the vales,
And stood to tell him what I found.
He knew and said it was a quail's,
For he himself the nest had found,
Among the wheat and on the green,
When going on his daily round,
With eggs as many as fifteen.
Among the stranger birds they feed,
Their summer flight is short and low;
There's very few know where they breed,
And scarcely any where they go.
Starry Sky Journal 