18 BULLETIN 162, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



white with hoarfrost, and when the feeble rays of the sun are late 

 in rising, they are slow to venture out. But usually by an hour after 

 sunrise they are afoot toward some convenient weed patch, stubble 

 field, berry patch, or cultivated field. Here they feed for an hour 

 or two, filling their crops, and then retire to some sheltered spot for 

 a midday siesta, digesting their food, dusting or preening their 

 plumage, or merely basking in the sun or dozing. About two hours 

 before sunset they return to their feeding grounds again for an- 

 other feast before going to roost at dusk. 



The food of the bobwhite has been exhaustively studied, and a mass 

 of material has been published on it. Space will not permit any 

 detailed account of it here; I can give only a general idea of it. 

 The most complete account of it that I have seen is given by Sylvester 

 D. Judd (1905) of the Biological Survey, to which the reader is re- 

 ferred. He says that the bobwhite is "one of our most nearly om- 

 nivorous species. In addition to seeds, fruit, leaves, buds, tubers, and 

 insects, it has been known to eat spiders, myriapods, crustaceans, 

 mollusks, and even batrachians." In analysis of 918 stomachs, col- 

 lected during every month in the year, in 21 States and in Canada, 

 the food for the year as a whole consisted of vegetable matter, 83.59 

 per cent, and animal matter, 16.41 per cent, mixed with some sand 

 and gravel. Of the vegetable food, grain constituted 17.38 per cent, 

 seed 52.83 per cent and fruit 9.57 per cent; the grain was probably 

 mostly waste kernels, and the seeds were mainly weed seeds; not a 

 single kernel of sprouting grain was found in any of the crops or 

 stomachs ; and there is no evidence that quail ever do any damage to 

 standing crops. The fruits eaten were practically all wild fruits. 

 The animal matter was distributed among beetles, 6.92 per cent; 

 grasshoppers, 3.71 per cent; bugs, 2.77 per cent; caterpillars, 0.95 

 per cent; and other things, 2.06 per cent. From October to March 

 the food is almost entirely vegetable matter, but late in spring and 

 in summer it is made up largely of insects, August showing 44.1 per 

 cent of insect food. The insects eaten are mostly injurious species, 

 many of which are avoided by other insectivorous birds, such as 

 " the potato beetle, twelve-spotted cucumber beetle, striped cucumber 

 beetle, squash lady-bird beetle, various cutworms, the tobacco worm, 

 army worm, cotton worm, cotton bollworm, the clover weevil, cotton 

 boll weevil, imbricated snout beetle, May beetle, click beetle, the red- 

 legged grasshopper, Rocky Mountain locust, and chinch bug." 



Since the above was written, the author has seen Stoddard's (1931) 

 much more elaborate account of the food and feeding habits of quail 

 in the Southeastern States, contributed by C. O. Handley. Doctor 

 Judd's report covered a wider territory, and the stomachs were 

 obtained for each month of the year, but most of them were taken 



