52 Dr. E. Coues — Field Notes on Lophortyx gambeli. 



With the exception, perhaps, of thick pine woods, wanting 

 in undergrowth, these birds frequent every sort of locality. 

 They seem, however, to be particularly fond of the tangled, 

 briary undergrowth and thick willow copses of the creek-bot- 

 toms, and the heavy " chaparral " that fills the mountain-gorges 

 through which flow little streams. But they are also very plen- 

 tiful on broken, rocky hill-sides, among the thick scrub-oak*, 

 mezquite, and manzanita bushes that almost invariably cover 

 such situations, as well as in the patches of heavy dry heath 

 {Artemisia, Larrea, and the like) that converts extensive plains 

 into chaparralf. But I have so often found them in every situ- 

 ation, that I can hardly say that they have any special prefe- 

 rence. In laboriously climbing among huge bare granitic or 

 old-red-sandstone boulders, hunting for Salpinctes obsoletus, I 

 have often found them ; and once a bevy whirred up from a 

 little dry knoll in the midst of an extensive reed-marsh, where I 

 was wading in water up to my middle, trying to detect an Agelaus 

 tricolor or A. guhernator among the thousands of A. phosniceus 

 all about me. 



Like all its tribe, GambePs Quail is chiefly graminivorous and 

 frugivorous, though insects form no small portion of its food. 

 Seeds of all kinds of grasses, berries of all sorts, wild grapes, 

 all the numerous small plant-infesting beetles, with flies and 

 other soft insects, are all to be found in its crop. Doubtless, 

 should Arizona prosper in an agricultural sense, wheat, barley, 

 and other cereals will become acceptable to it ; but it has hardly 

 as yet had an opportunity for the cultivation of a taste for these 

 productions. In early spring it feeds very extensively on the 

 tender, fresh buds of young willows j and then the salicine in 

 these communicates more or less of a bitter flavour to the flesh, 

 just as, in Labrador, I have found the flesh of the Canace cana- 

 densis and Lagopus aJhus greatly injured in flavour by the 

 resinous buds on which they feed during spring and summer. 



I have heard three distinct notes from Lophortyx gambeli, and 



* All the species of Quercus that I have met with in Arizona, with 

 one, perhaps two exceptions, are rather scrubby bushes than trees. 



t " Chaparral," a generic term, very indefinitely used to designate 

 tracts covered with any sort of thick, scrubby bushes ; " brash" is our 

 nearest equivalent. 



