510 GAME BIBDS OF CALIFORNIA 



J. E. McClellan says {in Judd, 1905, p. 60): ''Their feeding 

 hours are early in the morning and just before sundown in the 

 evening, when they go to roost in the thick tops of the scrub live oaks. 

 Their feeding habits are similar to those of the domestic hen. They 

 are vigorous scratchers, and will jump a foot or more from the ground 

 to nip off leaves." 



When alarmed the Mountain Quail carries its crest feathers erect, 

 bowing backwards towards the tip but not tilted forward as in the 

 case of the Valley Quail. This action gives the bird an alert attitude — 

 consistent with its evident anxiety in case there are young about. 



Although habitually occupying brushy and forested areas, this 

 quail but seldom perches in trees, and as far as we know the adults 

 never roost in one at night. They stick close to the ground and 

 usually seek safety by running beneath cover rather than by flight. 

 For this reason the Mountain Quail is considered an unsatisfactory 

 bird to hunt. When hunted in the brush they generally run some 

 distance before flying, scattering and finally taking wing like as not 

 behind a bush so as to preclude the probability of a successful shot. 



Lyman Belding (1892?), p. 233), after intimate acquaintance with 

 the Mountain Quail in the central Sierra Nevada wrote of its habits 

 as f olloAvs : 



The . . . Quail . . . which are so plentiful in the high mountains in summer, 

 are only summer residents there. They usually spend the winter below the 

 snow line, but as it is not possible to tell just where that is, or rather where 

 it is going to be, they are sometimes caught iu snow storms, but I have been 

 astonished at the correctness of their apparent forecast of different winters. 

 A few birds winter high in the mountains, but I think they are parts of flocks 

 which were nearly annihilated, or young birds wliich got scattered and lost, 

 and a few that were wounded and survived. 



They begin their journey on foot from the summit and east slope to the 

 [western] foothills, a little after the first of September, and by the first of 

 October, when the game law allows them to be shot, they have nearly all 

 escaped from the mountain hunters to run the gauntlet of those lower down, on 

 the west slope. In some respects they are very stupid birds, in others, quite 

 the reverse. When they are going from their summer to their winter resorts, 

 birds of a flock can all, or nearly all, be shot if the flock can be turned from 

 its course and scattered. They soon begin to call together and will nearly 

 always respond to a hunter's imitation of their call. The loud, pleasing call of 

 the male in breeding season is not easily imitated nor described, though appar- 

 ently consisting of a single note, which is sometimes varied a little. 



Barlow and Price (1901, pp. 158-160) say that: 



By the first of September the quail are restless and are beginning their 

 peculiar vertical migration to the west slope of the mountains. Sometimes four 

 to six adults with their young will form a covey of ten to thirty individuals 

 and pursue their way, almost wholly "on foot," along the ridges to a more 

 congenial winter climate. By Oct. 1 the quail have almost abandoned the 



