68 BULLETIN 16 2, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



"crow " lacking the two additional notes which the latter gives at the end ; also 

 the Valley Quail lacks much of the conversational twitter of its desert relative. 



Enemies. — Quail have numerous enemies; the eggs and young of 

 these and other ground-nesting birds are preyed' upon by crows, 

 ravens, jaj's, snakes, raccoons, weasels, skunks, squirrels, and badg- 

 ers; the adults also are pursued and killed by hawks, owls, coyotes, 

 foxes, bobcats, and domestic cats and dogs. Gopher snakes are 

 particularly fond of quail's eggs. Joseph Dixon (1930) tells a 

 striking story of a brood of 19 young quail that was entirely de- 

 stroyed b}' a pair of California jays, which he says are one of the 

 quail's worst enemies; he saw four chicks carried off by one jay 

 within 15 minutes. 



Game. — The California quail, in its two forms, has often been 

 referred to as the game bird of California, has been hunted by 

 more sportsmen and market hunters than any other bird, and has 

 been killed in enormous numbers. Its great abundance in former 

 years seems almost unbelievable to-day. Dr. A. K. Fisher (1893) 

 wrote : 



Throughout the San Joaquin Valley, Mr. Nelson found it common ahout 

 ranches, along water courses or near springs. It was excessively abundant at 

 some of the springs in the hills about the Temploa Mountains and Carrizo 

 Plain. In the week following the expiration of the close season, two men, 

 pot hunting for the market, were reported to have killed 8,400 quail at a 

 solitary spring in the Temploa Mountains. The men built a brush blind near 

 the spring, which was the only water within a distance of 20 miles, and as 

 evening approached the quails came to it by thousands. One of Mr. Nelson's 

 informants who saw the birds at this place stated that the ground all about 

 the water was covered by a compact body of quails, so that the hunters 

 mowed them down by the score at every discharge. 



Grinnell, Bryant, and Storer (1918) say: 



In the days when the Valley Quail was plentiful far beyond its condition 

 to-day, it was a common bird on the markets and could be obtained at prac- 

 tically every hotel and restaurant. Records show that during the season 

 1895-96 as many as 70,370 quail (mostly Valley Quail) were sold on the 

 markets of San Francisco and Los Angeles ; 'while an earlier report states 

 that full 100,000 were disposed of in a single year in the markets of San 

 Francisco. W. T. Martin, of Pomona, states that in 1S81-S4 he and a partner 

 hunted Valley Quail in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties for the 

 San Francisco markets. Eight to fourteen dozen were secured daily, and 

 in the fall of 1S83 the two men secured 300 dozen in 17 days. Martin himself 

 secured 114 birds in one day's hunt. In 18S1 and 18S2 over 32,000 dozen quail 

 were shipped to San Francisco from Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, 

 and brought to the hunters engaged in the business one dollar a dozen. In those 

 days restaurants charged thirty cents for quail-on-toast. By 1885 hunting had 

 become unprofitable because of the reduction in the numbers of quail. 



Quoting from T. S. Van Dyke (1892), they say: 



At your first advance into the place where the quail last settled in confusion, 

 a dozen or more rise in front of you and as many more on each side anywhere 



